Thanksgiving Day

By Volodymyr Kish

My family has been celebrating Thanksgiving Day in the same way for the past several decades. We make the long trek to my mother-in-law’s cottage north of Bancroft, Ont. where we revel in the spectacular fall colours that are one of nature’s most awesome displays. The brilliant shades of yellow, gold, orange and red are beyond description, and perennially remind me that human art can’t hold a candle to the wonders of the natural world.

Early October is also usually prime season for certain varieties of wild mushrooms and we eagerly tromp through the woods searching in particular for the delectable variety known as Honey Mushrooms. These are transformed with the help of some garlic and onions into exquisite gravy that accompanies the traditional Thanksgiving turkey.

Thanksgiving Day weekend is also our final opportunity of the season to enjoy the wilderness, to canoe lazily along the lakes and streams, to enjoy large evening bonfires, and for a few days, escape the stresses of our urban existence and be thankful for the good fortune that we have in being able to enjoy all this.

Thanksgiving Day celebrations have a long history reaching back to the era when man first adopted an agricultural lifestyle. They marked the end of the harvesting season, and were a time of feasting and giving thanks to the deities for bountiful harvests. Interestingly, in Canada, Thanksgiving Day as a fixed official national holiday has a relatively recent provenance, having only been instituted in 1957 and designated to be held on the second Monday of every October.

The Americans of course, have been celebrating Thanksgiving for much longer than that. In the U.S., it has been an official national holiday, held on the fourth Thursday of November, since 1863. It should be noted though that American Thanksgiving celebrations go back even further, to colonial times. Most Americans would claim that the first such celebration took place in 1621 when the first Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth gave thanks for having survived their first year in the new land. There are even earlier historical records though, showing that the colonists of Jamestown, Virginia held similar Thanksgiving commemorations as early as 1610.

To be historically fair, it should be noted that Spanish Conquistadors had been staging their own Thanksgiving feasts in the New World as much as a century earlier, while the aboriginal natives of North America had their own harvest festivals likely thousands of years before Europeans ever graced the shores of North America.

In Ukraine, similar harvest festivals and celebrations, known as Obzhynky, have also been observed since the dawn of recorded history. The word Obzhynky comes from the Ukrainian word zhaty, which means to reap, or harvest grain. Obzhynky marked the end of the harvesting season, typically the end of August. When the zhentsi (reapers) had cut the last of the grain, it was time to celebrate. The last sheaf of wheat cut was known as the didukh and was decorated and kept to be used for the Christmas celebrations to come.

What followed was a period of relative relaxation when most of the heavy work in the fields was done for the year, and the villagers could indulge in socializing and recreational pursuits. This also became the prime season for partying, courting and weddings. Ukrainian folk music is rich in Obzhynky songs.

I have a special fondness for Thanksgiving Day in that it is one of the few major holidays that has its roots in nature’s cycle of the seasons, and is not tied to man-made events, such as Independence Days, Christmas, Easter, Remembrance Day, etc. It is a good time to give thanks and be grateful that we live on this wonderful little planet and have been gifted with the natural bounty that sustains us.