A day to give thanks to the Earth
Flexible tradition of Canadian Thanksgiving can embrace new ecological values.
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What does Canadian Thanksgiving mean in 2010? What might it mean in the future?
Not just, one hopes, a chance with family and friends to stuff ourselves silly with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, squash, green beans, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and myriad other culinary delicacies from Canada’s multicultural mosaic.
Nor is it just, one also hopes, a chance to digest our meals ensconced before the home entertainment system (in varied states of consciousness) while watching the CFL “Thanksgiving Classic” doubleheader — though feasting and football certainly have a venerable place in contemporary Thanksgiving observance.
Interestingly, the story of Canadian Thanksgiving is a long and tangled one.
Though many consider Canadian Thanksgiving an offshoot of our American neighbour’s November holiday, commemorating the Pilgrims’ 1621 harvest fest with their aboriginal hosts in Massachusetts, Canada’s tradition has a different and historically earlier provenance.
In 1578, more than 40 years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, British explorer Martin Frobisher celebrated a thanksgiving meal for a safe return from a search for the Northwest Passage in Newfoundland, and Samuel de Champlain in 1604 began formal rituals of thanksgiving in New France.
As Canadian historian David Neufeld records in The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, Canadian Thanksgiving has been a “movable feast” not only in terms of its date on the calendar, but in its very rationale. Thanksgiving has been used in Canada to celebrate a plethora of events, from the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 to the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from a dreadful illness in 1872.
According to Canadian historian A.D. Doerksen, Canadian Thanksgiving was generally celebrated in late fall through the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time, the holiday’s focus not only included the King’s health and well-being, but also abundant harvests, and the end of epidemics.
In 1921, Armistice Day (Remembrance Day) and Thanksgiving Day were united into a single holiday on Nov. 11. But why keep things simple? This is Canada, eh? So in 1931 the act establishing Armistice Day was amended and the name of the holiday changed to Remembrance Day. As a result, Thanksgiving became a free range holiday, prowling the calendar of October for a proper place to alight.
How does one deal with such a wayward holiday? In typical Canadian fashion — by an act of Parliament, of course!
Thus, on Jan. 31, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed: “A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed . . . to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.”
In a sense, the Canadian Thanksgiving is a case study in the ongoing Canadian identity crisis. With its multiple meanings and meandering dates, Thanksgiving in Canada doesn’t follow a linear narrative. It is confusing. It represents different historical circumstances. It is migratory and non-linear.
But it is perhaps in this undulating quality, in its attempt to address contemporary historical circumstances and confront pressing concerns (such as epidemics and threats to national independence), that Canadian Thanksgiving holds a unique prospect for our tine.
One of the defining contemporary features is our present ecological morass, a time of climate change, of rapid species loss, of massive oil spills and noxious mine tailings oozing throughout towns and into river systems, of threats to marine life across our oceans.
How might Canadian Thanksgiving respond to these environmental crises?
First, Thanksgiving suggests gratitude; it is a collective moment to recognize that the things we enjoy and which enable of us live life abundantly — clean water, fresh air, food, arable land, family, friends — should never be taken for granted.
Second, it suggests “gift.” It is a national day to recognize that the harvests of the land and sea, and the relationships that give meaning to our lives, are not simply there “for the taking.” They are things that in a sense have been given to us, and for which we must be grateful.
Third, Thanksgiving gives us a day off to reflect upon, and express thanks for, the fact that we are not independent, but dependent, on our Earth, our family, our fellow citizens, animals, plants, and, for those of a faith perspective, divine presence.
This day marks a time when we are invited to step out of our world of consumerism and its surfeit of merchandise. It is a moment to appreciate that ultimately the things that are most important in our lives are not made in a factory in China, nor can they be purchased from a bigbox store in suburbia.
With its undulating motivations and protean historical meanings, Canadian Thanksgiving is well-poised to embrace such pressing ecological concerns, and to invite us to be deeply grateful for what truly unites us across our home and true native land — the Earth itself.
Stephen Bede Scharper is a professor of environment at the University of Toronto and co-author of The Green Bible.
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