In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October, and in the United States, our neighbours to the south celebrates Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. While Thanksgiving is also known as Columbus Day, established to recognize the Christopher Columbus’ voyage and landing in the “new world”, Indigenous People had a call to action in the 1980’s to acknowledge the losses suffered by Native Americans as a result of the historical conquest of North America by Europeans. This call to action resulted in Indigenous Peoples’ Day, now celebrated since the 1990s (in Canada National Indigenous Peoples’ Day is celebrated in June), which honors Native American history and culture.
To learn more about the history of Thanksgiving in North America, visit the article ‘Columbus Day 2021’ in the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and ‘A First Nations take on Thanksgiving: You’re welcome weekend’ in the Muskrat Magazine, an online Indigenous arts and culture magazine that honours the connection between humans and our traditional ecological knowledge.
Did you also know that giving thanks is celebrated by many different cultures in different countries around the world? Many countries celebrate the harvest season through their own traditions, and we all seem to have a few commonalities—celebrating food, family and being grateful. Learn more in ‘Thanksgiving and its multicultural traditions around the world’ in Culturs, a global multicultural magazine.
Want to try a new tradition next Thanksgiving? Consider trying pumpkin pitas—a Greek, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian delight. To learn more, check out this YouTube video ‘Making Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian pita pumpkin’, on how to make pumpkin pitas.