Thanksgiving's dubious origins

[cos]

Yesterday, my housemate asked if Thanksgiving is a holiday all over the world, or mainly just here? We all knew that Canada has a Thanksgiving in October, but she had no idea if it's widespread in the rest of the world. I thought it was probably just here, and couldn't think of any other country that has it, but didn't know whether maybe a few others might... so I went searching the net.

Apparently, one other country in the world has a national Thanksgiving holiday. It's on October 25th, in between the Canadian (2nd Monday of October) and American (4th Thursday of November). Do you know which country, and what the holiday is commemorating?

Think of your answer. Then click here to check. Then come back and vote in my poll, and also leave a comment with your initial reaction once you found out (preferably before reading anyone else's comments).

[Poll #1490935]

Comments

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I clicked "other" because I had no knowledge of the answer, but the way you phrased the question gave a clue as to what type of thing it commemorated, and which country was responsible. So it didn't count as a surprise.

[cos]

I don't buy that, unless the expectations I gave you were very specific. Just how much did you figure out *before* you clicked?

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that the event commemorated would be a war crime or crime against humanity committed by the U.S. against a poor country. I figured it would take that level of notoriety (negative denotation intended) and alany (not quite irony) for it to earn this post.

[cartographer.livejournal.com]

Exactly the same. I thought "I bet it's going to be some country that was liberated or 'liberated' by the US"

[cos]

Except that it's not. It was free and independent before the US invasion, and after. Nobody made any claims of "liberating" it.

[cos]

For the record, my initial reaction was "WTF???" followed by a minor flood of memories of the Reagan administration.

[ratontheroad.livejournal.com]

I knew it was Grenada, but I didn't know why. Interesting story,though.

[cos]

I'm curious, how did you know?

[ratontheroad.livejournal.com]

I think it was presented as a bit of trivia before, and it stuck in my head. It probably displaced some important bit of information, like my wife's SSN. One day, when my phone is dead and I stood in line at the insurance office for hours, and they ask me that question, I will curse Thanksgiving, curse Grenada, and probably Ronald Reagan as well.

[jkuroda.livejournal.com]

I knew, but only because a neighbor's father was a med student in Grenada at the time and was in the middle of it all as it happened.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I checked other, but mostly because I wanted to check the cos option in a cos poll. I couldn't resist the shiny!

I didn't know about Grenada, but I'm not shocked.

As for other countries: My dad likes to point out that Italian doesn't even have a phrase to describe "thanksgiving". Then we wound up in Montreal on Canadian Thanksgiving and learned the Quebecois term for it: Action de grace. Thus we could now guess such a term in any other Romance language.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Initial reaction: Huh, interesting. Colonialism all around.

[elfy.livejournal.com]

It was a surprise, but not in the 'WTF' sense, just the, to me it could possible have been any country - though, I know why it's Grenada without reading the whole article.
Also, we have something similar as well, it's just not a national holiday and not widely celebrated anymore. It's more a rural kind of thing, I guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_festival

[motive-nuance.livejournal.com]

Grenada seemed unlikely but not surprising. (viz., I wouldn't have said that it was more unlikely than most other nations to have a holiday called 'Thanksgiving'.)

[cos]

Not even the reason, or its recentness, were at all surprising?

[pikake.livejournal.com]

well, eid is pretty close..

[ron_newman]

Only this year, though.

[charolastra00.livejournal.com]

Not a national holiday, but I remember hearing in Leiden, the Netherlands that they hold a Thanksgiving service to commemorate the voyage of the Pilgrims. My wiki-fu proves that true. ;)

[cos]

Yup, that's why I was specific about calling it a "national holiday". Didn't want the Netherlands' ambiguity creeping in :)

[seventorches.livejournal.com]

I had an asshole BF once who asked me how Bolivia celebrates Thanksgiving. I said they don't, it's a USanian holiday. He insisted that "They must do SOMETHING, because Thanksgiving is really just the Indian's original harvest festival, and every culture has harvest festivals!" And I could not convince him that no, in fact, "the harvest" is not in November in all parts of the globe; and that in fact, the Andes contains a lot of climates and several cultures; and no, they don't have anything in November that I've ever heard of; and that in fact, I'm sick of talking about it and don't give a rat's ass what they do in Bolivia in November or any other time of year; and that if he really wanted to know he could go look it up and quit bugging me. If I'd told him this thing about Granada he'd never have believed me. :)

[lizkayl.livejournal.com]

I got as far as "It was probably a post-WWI, freed colony"

[cos]

Sorta, except Grenada had been independent for 1-3 decades (depending on how you count it, since the process was gradual) by the time of the invasion. What they're commemorating is an invasion that happened after Grenada's independence was well established.

If it had indeed been some country celebrating the event that freed them from colonialism, I wouldn't have been nearly so surprised.

[cinnabarine.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of Thanksgiving prior to coming to the US and sort of celebrated it in Puerto Rico (which, to be fair, is technically a part of the US). It was taught to me as more of a religious thing. A general day of being thankful to God for being alive and having good things/people in my life. There wasn't that much emphasis on pilgrims or the history of it. Nor on turkey. And we certainly celebrated it way more once we moved here.

Grenada is interesting, though not so surprising.

[cos]

I'm not surprised that Thanksgiving traditions in Puerto Rico are different than here in New England, but yes, Puerto Rico is a part of the US and therefore I expect it to have the same idiosyncratic US-specific national holidays we do here. For example, I assume there's a Labor Day in October in Puerto Rico, too. Although there's an international Labor Day as well, that one's on May 1st, and the one in October is US-specific. I also assume Puerto Rico has a 4th of July holiday, etc.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

American Labor Day is actually in September.

[cos]

Right, oops. Yes, I knew that :)

[cinnabarine.livejournal.com]

Heh. Not exactly. There is a distinct culture with different emphasis on different holidays and such. American independence from England? Nope. Three Kings Day? Heck yes.

The link is more that Puerto Rico is more likely to have exposure to what American holidays are, what with TV and federal days off that are observed and such.