28 November 2008

Thanksgiving in Australia

... doesn't really exist. Christmas is our huge celebration, with its 6-week summer school holidays from mid-December until late January. New Year's Eve is just about as big with many people. Easter is our other big celebration of note, as it involves a 4-day long weekend.

We love our public holidays, most of which fall on Mondays in Term 2 (April-May-June). Celebrating the birthday of the Queen, the Australia labour movement or those who fought and lost their lives for our country by taking a day off is right up our alley. It's The Australian Way.

But most of us only know about Thanksgiving from our American and Canadian friends.

We know it is big in the US, but we didn't know that Canada celebrated Thanksgiving earlier (in October) until we looked "Thanksgiving" up on Wikipedia.

Well really, that was just me.

However, because all of this thankfulness is going on in blogs everywhere, it's spread to us. That's why we're going on about things we're thankful for, without the hassles of the turkey and 5:00am cooking marathons.

8 comments:

tinsenpup said...

No, not just you! Everyone in Australia recently looked "Thanksgiving" up on Wikipedia and discovered that Canadian Thanksgiving had totally passed us by. Okay, well, that's you and me, anyway. Surely that's a big enough sample to extrapolate from?

Givinya De Elba said...

Yes, certainly. So 100% of Australians surveyed found out about Thanksgiving from Wikipedia, and realised they'd totally missed the Canadian Thanksgiving.

Dee said...

well, I looked it up too, trying to figure out what Thanksgiving was actually about - with many answers
so still not totally sure....

Bit like many Aussies with Australia day... a day off for the cricket.... ha ha

Long dark hair, blue eyes said...

Not all Aussie's check wikipedia for Thanks giving. I based my "huge" knowledge on the plethora of US sitcoms I have seen

And more specifically I knew that Thanksgiving was earlier in Canada from watching How I met your mother....

Adelaine said...

Yeah - thanks!!! You know I was wondering :)

I guess it never hurts to be thankful any day of the year!!

Joy said...

In America you see lots of elementary age children wearing Pilgrim hats and tracing their handprints to look like turkeys. They also dress up like native American Indians. I'm not sure what Wikipedia says about it. We're celebrating the Pilgrims surviving that first year in their new world. Supposedly the Pilgrims and the Indians came together for this feast.

I wonder if the turkey is the main course in Canada like it is in the U.S.

Joy

Joy said...

I left you something on my blog.


Joy

Jen said...

Now that is the best way to do Thanksgiving. Be thankful with out all the food work. Nice!