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Psalm 100: Thanksgiving Day in Canada

There is a children`s book, Thanksgiving Day in Canada that I have quoted quite often for many years when speaking about Thanksgiving in Canada. My children all know the book very well. Two or three years ago I found out something very interesting about the book.

Before moving to the Island here, Susan and I were responsible for a couple of corps in inner city Toronto. One of them was The Salvation Army`s Warehouse Mission. One Sunday with Thanksgiving coming up I happened to be speaking with our worship leader, Krys Val a.k.a. Krys Lewicki, about this book and it turns out that he wrote it! (It was promoted by CBC as part of Canada`s 125 anniversary!) That is amazing. I count Krys as one of my friends and to find out he wrote one of my favourite seasonal stories is really quite something. Krys also wrote a Thanksgiving song for the book that we were blessed to hear on Thanksgiving Sundays as he led us in worship in Toronto. From the book:

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are more closely connected to the traditions of Europe than of the United States. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England, arrived in Newfoundland in 1578. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World. That means the first Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts!

For a few hundred years, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November, before it was declared a national holiday in 1879. It was then, that November 6th was set aside as the official Thanksgiving holiday. But then on January 31, 1957, Canadian Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October, Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed."

Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October because after the World Wars, Remembrance Day (November 11th) and Thanksgiving kept falling in the same week. Another reason for Canadian Thanksgiving arriving earlier than its American counterpart is that Canada is geographically further north than the United States, causing the Canadian harvest season to arrive earlier than the American harvest season. And since Thanksgiving for Canadians is more about giving thanks to the Lord for the harvest season than the arrival of pilgrims, it makes sense to celebrate the holiday in October.

In this day and age of the Holy being replaced by the secular in many facets of our society, it is good to remember that Parliament itself has declared Thanksgiving as "a day of general thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed."

Please this weekend let us remember not only to be thankful but to be thankful to God; and with all else that we are indeed thankful for let us not neglect our gratitude for the harvest that the farmers have reaped this year and all those who the Lord will and does provide for through that.

This weekend and this day let us remember to offer thanksgiving to Almighty God for all else and for the bountiful harvest with which we have been blessed.

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