Happy Thanksgiving, eh?

"Thanksgiving in Canada is not like Thanksgiving in the United States." This is what a professional acquaintance of mine told me last week as we were discussing plans for the long holiday weekend. I think this might have been one of the greatest understatements of my year, actually. Since Canadians had the good sense to put their harvest holiday on a Monday, there's very little importance attributed to the day itself. Thanksgiving get-togethers can happen on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Thanksgiving Monday. There is very little long-distance travel, from what I can tell. In the United States, Thanksgiving tends to be a much bigger deal, depending on what part of the country you're in, and what your own family's traditions are. It's on a Thursday, so most people take Friday off as well. Norman Rockwell ensured that we would all eat giant roasted turkeys and stuffing. And then we all go shopping.

Both Thanksgiving celebrations are harvest festivals. A special day set aside so that we remember, for at least a few hours, to be grateful for all that we have. From the time we are small children in the United States, we are taught that Thanksgiving has its origins in the feast of celebration held in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621. The English settlers (better known as "pilgrims") celebrated their survival, thanks in large part to the indigenous peoples that already inhabited that part of the country. So we have images like the one to the right, a painting of The First Thanksgiving by Jean Leon Jerome Ferris: helpful Native Americans teaching the Pilgrims how to farm and survive in their new home, and the Pilgrims sharing the bounty of their harvest with the Natives. It's very quaint and very nostalgic, and in many ways a total load of crap. Thanksgiving Day became an official national holiday in the United States in 1941, as the country- mired in a depression and about to enter a World War- desperately needed something to be happy about.

Canada did not make Thanksgiving a statutory holiday until 1957. (Incidentally, Thanksgiving Day is known in francophone Canada as Jour de l'action de grâce. Ugh.) A little late to the party, perhaps, but any Canadian will proudly let you know that, while it may not have been an official holiday for 16 years after FDR's signature on the bill, Canada celebrated Thanksgiving first. You read correctly. Thanksgiving Day is not an invention of the United States, but has its origins in Canada. Before Canada was Canada, of course. You don't see a lot of Thanksgiving decorations in Canada. This is due in part to the fact that the only Thanksgiving decorations that are accessible are made in or purchased from the United States. And what do these decorations involve? Pilgrims and Indians (sic).

Canadian Thanksgiving does not have its roots in a celebration of a successful harvest after a long and brutal year, like the celebration of Plymouth in 1621. No, Canadian Thanksgiving commemorates the voyage of British explorer (and privateer) Martin Frobisher. Frobisher, with royal charter in hand, and backing from an English merchant company, sailed three times to the New World looking for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean between 1576 and 1578. He landed in modern-day Canada, somewhere in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Frobisher and his crew sailed up a waterway in Canada, realized it was a dead end, then turned around and came back. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the origin of Canadian Thanksgiving. A full 50 years before the Plymouth Colony celebrated is hard-won survival, Martin Frobisher went up a river, found some rocks and some angry beavers, and came home.

To be fair, there were Native Americans involved in Canada's first Thanksgiving, too. Frobisher offered a gift of a bell to an Inuit man, who very trustingly got on the ship, and was quickly kidnapped and carted off to England. He died a month or so after arrival; he caught "some disease."

Ok... Now it's time to forget history, and indulge in a Thanksgiving tradition that transcends the 49th parallel: football.