Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans here

[michaelsmoker]

Most of you are already driving or flying to grandma and grandpa's place for tomorrow's dinner, but if anyone is still reading forum posts here, happy Thanksgiving.

Michael

[webscribe]

Yes, Happy Thanksgiving to our American neighbo(u)rs!

I'm a Canadian and still don't know why our Thanksgiving is in October. I do know that when I do find out, I'll probably write an article about it...

[jadedragon]

I know... and it would be a good article. The main reason that Canadians have Thanksgiving before the Americans is that we have much more to be thankful for, starting with the fact we are "not Americans" (the defining characteristic of Canadians Canadians are also smart enough to put Thanksgiving and Christmas further apart so we can start celebrating Christmas sooner too. So Merry Christmas everyone!

[michaelsmoker]

Jade,

The funny corollary to your reply is that I have to mail my Christmas cards out this week if they're going to arrive on time! And in Toronto, we already had our Santa Claus Parade last weekend.

Michael

[webscribe]

You're so right! Thank you Canada Post!

I've always found it amusing that Canadians define themselves as "not Americans." You'd think that we'd have started defining ourselves as "having stricter credit requirements and banking regulations," but then that would also be defining ourselves in relation to Americans (sigh).

There are a lot of differences between Americans and Canadians, but you have to live here to understand that. Who was it that said Canada is a vast, half-frozen landscape in search of a country? Sounds like Marshall McLuhan (sp??).

[webscribe]

Okay, so I just found out that, as Thanksgiving was originally connected to the harvest, Canadians had to celebrate earlier in the year because of our terrible climate. If we waited until November to harvest our crops as Americans do, there would be nothing left of our crops.

Now that we all know something about Thanksgiving in Canada vs. the US, we can start writing those seasonal articles--for next year .