Thanksgiving

It took me a few years to figure out thanksgiving after we moved to Canada. But now I definitely get it. No-longer kids make strenous efforts to get home, you invite people for dinner who are far away from home (and might not "get" thanksgiving either). Days are spent fretting about what to make for dinner, with text messages back and forth either begging for nut roast, or begging not to have nut roast. You spend hours chopping veggies, baking and cooking, so that finally there are no more pots to use in the kitchen. The dishwasher chooses to break down just prior to the weekend and the dishwasher repair man refuses to visit until after the weekend is over. And through it all, and despite all the effort, everyone is so pleased to be together that the weekend and thanksgiving dinner are way beyond fun.

Thanksgiving doesn't happen in the UK, but when I was growing up we did have harvest festival at church. We had to bring baskets of produce from our gardens (and increasingly as the years went by, cans from our cupboards), which we carried in a crocodile from the school at the back of the graveyard, round the corner to the church. The church was always decorated to the hilt with michelmas daises, lashed in the umbrella stands, something that the vicar of the time, Rev Clift, particularly disliked. We would stagger up the aisles with our loaded baskets and hand them over to him at the steps to the sancturary where he would place them all around the altar.

I was musing this year about the difference between Canada's thanksgiving and the US and thanks to the yarn harlot found out that the first North American Thanksgiving was celebrated when explorer (and pirate) Martin Frobisher stood on Baffin Island in 1578 and gave thanks for safely crossing the Atlantic. Similarly the French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, held huge feasts of thanks. Apparently they formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and shared their food with their Indian neighbours.

I always thought that thanksgiving was instigated by the pilgrim fathers after they had survived a year of hardship in the New World and had been taught how to grow squash, corn and beans, something I romanticised after having survived our first year in Canada. However, apparently the history is not as simple as it seems, and although the traditions that began with the Mayflower were carried North when the loyalists fled during the American revolution, there are other threads that are important to remember.

As the years go by family stories are retold and embelished. It is ARGs birthday at this time of year, and many times she has celebrated her birthday at Thanksgiving dinner, with pumpkin pie in lieu of birthday cake. This time we decided to have a birthday dinner on Saturday night, followed by Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night -- just to stretch out the overeating. But we remembered as we do every year that before I "got" thanksgiving I just used to ignore it. So, once when she was 10 or so, and her Aunt asked ARG what she wanted for her birthday, she embarrassed us to no end by saying that she just wanted to go and eat turkey at their house. It worked I guess -- after that I made sure to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And bit by bit, over the years, I began to understand the importance of celebrating Thanksgiving and gathering around to be thankful for good food, good families and good friends.