The World is a Stage
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Did you feel thankful, when you sat down to the monstrous meal on Thanksgiving Day?
Did you invite someone to share it that had no family to go to? Did you give thanks for having family, friends, food, a job, and for living in Canada?
Our Thanksgiving celebrations did not start with Pilgrims. In Canada it can be traced back to the 1578 voyage of explorer Martin Frobisher who left England in search of the Northwest Passage. This was the year of his third voyage to the Frobisher Bay area of Baffin Island in Nunavut. He was planning on starting a small settlement, so his 15 ships departed, filled with everything they would need.
This voyage became a disaster. The ship carrying all the lumber to build with was lost at sea. They were plagued by ice and freak storms which scattered the fleet, but finally, they met up in Frobisher Bay. Here, Master Robert Wolfall, who was their minister, “made unto them a godly sermon, exhorting them especially to be thankefull to God for their strange and miraculous deliverance in those so dangerous places..."
Years later, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, in 1604 onwards also held huge feasts of thanks. They even formed the Order of Good Cheer and gladly shared their food with their First Nations neighbours.
After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763, when New France was handed over to the British, the citizens of Halifax held a special day of Thanksgiving, but it did not occur every year.
United Empire Loyalists, who fled the U.S. after their revolution brought Thanksgiving traditions with them including turkey, pumpkin and squash.
Specific events resulted in specific Thanksgiving celebrations in Canada, like the conclusion of the War of 1812.
The first official Thanksgiving Day occurred after Canadian Confederation on April 5, 1872, to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from a serious illness.
When your life has been in peril and somehow you survive, being thankful is a natural reaction. In the past, events were usually big and very important. There was, however, no specific re-occurring day -- and why would you need one? After all, everyone back then gave thanks, every day for every meal and at the end of the day, for everything in their lives.
For many years before it was declared a national holiday in 1879, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November. From 1879 onward, Thanksgiving Day has been observed every year, the date initially being a Thursday in November. The date of celebration changed several times until, in 1957, it was officially declared to be the second Monday in October. The theme of the Thanksgiving holiday also changed each year to reflect an important event to be thankful for. In its early years it was for an abundant harvest and occasionally for a special anniversary.
The end of the First World War gave us our second Thanksgiving Day, Armistice Day, also in November, so dates were switched around and by 1957 ‘Thanksgiving Day’ would be as it is today, in October and the renamed, Remembrance Day, in November.
Today we have to be told to honour those we love on Valentine’s Day; our parents on Father and Mother’s Day and our religion on religious holidays.
What are you thankful for? Your iPhone? Your new game? Your riding lawn mower? Your 14th pair of shoes? In gaining all our material things, Canadians have lost sight of what is truly important in the everyday of our lives. Like waking up in the morning in a bed with a roof over our head. We have food on our table and running water and a sanitation system.
I am thankful for Temesgen, our foster child in Ethiopia, who is a constant reminder to be thankful that we do not live in a war-torn country, living in mud huts with a well five miles away. To remind us that we have clothes, food, education and healthcare for all.
Put your life into perspective by writing down five things you are thankful for when your day is done. Think carefully about it, strip away the superfluous ‘things’ we obsess on, and remember bare necessities of life and be thankful.