Opinion: What an American Can Learn from a Canadian Thanksgiving

Photo: Hannah Peters.

As an American, it was a little weird to be eating stuffing, mashed potatoes, and turkey over a month before Thanksgiving usually goes down back home. Despite this change in time, I think I’ve come to love it.

Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays; I like the spirit of it, and the coming togetherness of it all. It’s nice to get together with your family and friends and sit down to food that will fill you up, watch a parade with big balloons, and some football games that usually aren’t very good (if the Pats aren’t playing, I don’t really care). You get to catch up with family you haven’t seen in a while, you get to relax, and of course you get to disagree about politics with at least one person over dinner. 

While Uncle Warren’s biscuits and sausage gravy weren’t on the menu, my Canadian thanksgiving wasn’t all that different. The food was just about the same, the pies a little better, and the conversation ranged from how PEI was founded to the federal election. Instead of talking football, we talked hockey – or at least my cousins did – and I sat and tried to take notes so the kids at school would stop making fun of me for my lack of hockey jargon.

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Instead of everyone being at one table, there were about three, spread throughout the house, trying to make sure all the cousins had a seat. There was no talk of Black Friday deals or Christmas shopping. The trees still looked pretty snow was far outside our peripheral. I liked that when politics were discussed, it was civil, that it just wasn’t as divisive. 

Did I miss Charlie Brown Thanksgiving playing in the background? Yeah. Did I miss my parents and my sister? Of course. But something felt right about Thanksgiving way up north in the Maritimes. I could see the harvests happening outside the window, I could feel it in the air. Sure, it was low key, but that was nice. There were no Thanksgiving decorations or the president pardoning a turkey. It seemed to really focus on the important thing: family.

Back home, many people are concerned with everything but family. I know it differs from family to family and I’m pretty lucky for those I got at home, but Thanksgiving in America has gotten away from its roots in a sense. The holiday is almost too big for its britches – there are too many things around it. Christmas and consumerism encroach on it every year and it loses its magic, its simplicity. Thanksgiving is a low-key affair here in the land of moose and maple and I think that’s how it should be.

So, consider this my official petition to change Thanksgiving in America to about a month earlier, when the trees are prettiest, and the snow is still far away. Thank you to my Canadian neighbours and family for reminding me that Thanksgiving is about love and nothing else.