Thanksgiving In Canada

Thanksgiving is an annual holiday in Canada and is more or less, considered a secular celebration (though God is thanked for a good harvest season). Canadian Thanksgiving is also associated with a harvest festival, just like the Thanksgiving celebrations in US. In most of the jurisdictions in the country, Thanksgiving Day is a statutory holiday, with the provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia being the only exceptions. The actual Thanksgiving holiday falls on the second Monday of October, but Canadians can have their Thanksgiving meal on any of days in the three-day weekend. Sunday and Monday are the most common Thanksgiving meal days in Canada.

Thanksgiving celebrations in Canada are usually marked by a large family meal. Friends are invited over to share the lavish meal and various traditional delicacies are prepared by hosts. On this day, churches are decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corns, wheat sheaves, and other harvest bounty. While a lot of people go to churches, to offer thanks to the Almighty, others prefer to offer their prayers at home, along with their family members. On the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, English and European hymns and songs are sung by the people and scriptural selections are drawn from the biblical stories associated with the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.

In Canada, many families also look upon Thanksgiving as a weekend getaway opportunity to enjoy the autumn season and participate in a lot of interesting activities, like hiking, fishing, and hunting. Canadian Football League, the top professional football league in Canada, holds a doubleheader, which is known as Thanksgiving Day Classic. Thanksgiving week is the one of the only two weeks in the year when the league plays on Monday afternoons. The only other such week is the Labour Day Classic, played over the Labour Day weekend. However, the teams that play on the Thanksgiving Day Classic rotate each year, unlike the Labour Day Classic.