A painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris titled ‘The First Thanksgiving’ shows pilgrims and Native Americans gathering to share a meal. Copyright Library of Congress (CC by Attribution) As we learned in an earlier SRS post, the first Thanksgiving probably wasn’t really like this.

As I baked, I remembered that I’d sent “Happy Thanksgiving” notes to my Canadian friends back in early October. “Hmmm…” I wondered, “why is Canadian Thanksgiving in October?”

Since the US Thanksgiving is always the next-to-last Thursday in November, I also found myself sitting at the piano, practicing my Christmas carols and Hannukah songs for an early holiday party that’s coming up in just two weeks. “Why,” I also wondered, “aren’t there any Thanksgiving songs? Am I just missing something?”

This led me to do a bit of special Thanksgiving SearchResearch on the topic. Some of which I found surprised me. So I thought I’d share my holiday Research Questions with you in this special Cross-cultural Thanksgiving edition of SRS. See if you can’t figure these out…

1. I know Canada and the US celebrate Thanksgiving each fall. But do any other countries celebrate Thanksgiving (or equivalent holidays) as well? If so, what are they called, and when are they celebrated?

2. What Thanksgiving (and equivalent) traditions do different countries have? (I bet they don’t all eat turkey with cranberry sauce… that’s particularly North American.)

3. Speaking of ritual foods (turkey, cranberries, etc.)… what ritual songs are associated with the holidays? Many other holidays have associated songs–why not Thanksgiving? What am I missing?

Let us know what you find out. I’ll be back with my answers (and how I found them) next week.

(And yes, I remember that we did a similar SRS Challenge back in 2011, but this time, I’m looking for several other cultures that have a Thanksgiving celebration–not just one in particular.)

In the meantime, Merry Thanksgiving!



Google’s Thanksgiving Doodle for 2018 (US):