<Canadian> Thanksgiving
Harvested fresh from the garden for carrot cake.
Last weekend I celebrated Thanksgiving. Yes, it’s October. Oh, you thought Thanksgiving was in November? Yes, but that’s <American> Thanksgiving.
The Canadian version of the holiday is celebrated not on the fourth Thursday in November, but on the second Monday in October (at least since 1957, when Parliament fixed it as such – before that it appears to have been a floating holiday). Seeing as it’s just one Monday off work and school, in practice many Canadian families eat the Thanksgiving meal on Saturday or Sunday, juggling family schedules and allowing time for visiting family members to travel back home on the Monday.
And by “Canadian families” I mean non-Quebec families. Because here in Quebec, for French Québécois Canadians, Thanksgiving appears to be a non-event, somewhat like a British “bank holiday” where everyone has the day off work and school, but nobody is sure what the “holiday” is. There is a word for the holiday in French – “Action de Grâce” – which seems to loosely translate into “thankful for having a random day off work.”
It seems that Thanksgiving is historically associated with anglophone Protestant communities, so anglophone Quebeckers celebrate it, but the francophone Catholics didn’t want anything to do with it, not even for pumpkin pie. As for why it’s in October instead of November, I haven’t been able to find a definitive historical explanation, other than it being a fall harvest celebration, and harvest time comes sooner in colder climes.
Good thing we’re harvesting these in October not November.
As far as I can tell, the menu is largely the same as American thanksgiving. We celebrated with local friends (who don’t normally celebrate it) and made a roasted chicken, homemade gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and cranberry relish, salad, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (using my American recipe, which my Québécoise friend found perplexing), and a carrot cake made with carrots pulled fresh from the garden – at harvest time!
