Thanksgiving whats is it?

Good afternoon, Good evening, morning, depends on when you're watching this. Thank you for watching it. I'm going to teach you about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving may be a holiday that's exclusive to North America. Oh, except Mexico. So it's exclusive to Canada and America.

You may be wondering, "How is Canada and America even different?" Well, we've tons of things that are different, the primary one being the dates of Thanksgiving. In Canada, Thanksgiving is that the second Monday in October. Get your calendars out.

I didn't check out what date the second Monday was in October was, but look on your calendar, "First Monday, no. Second Monday, yes." So in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October. America, however, it's closer to Christmas.

It's one -- almost one month faraway from Christmas, which is December 25th, for your information. In America, it's celebrated the fourth Thursday in November, otherwise, you can consider it because the last Thursday in November. I actually looked this up.

This year being 2013, it's actually November 28th. So if you reside in America, on November 28th it's Thanksgiving. If you reside in Canada, it'll be the second Monday in October. An interesting little tidbit of history for you: We didn't officially have a Thanksgiving holiday -- and it is, actually, a holiday in Canada and America -- until 1957.

One of the good, great folks that work on the parliament buildings decided to offer us a vacation in October, and it happened in 1957. It was official that the second Monday in October would be Thanksgiving. In America, this happened a long, long time ago.

From the knowledge that I've seen, it actually happened in 1863 with this guy named Lincoln. Have you heard of this guy? He was the president of America around this point, and he made this a vacation. So what is Thanksgiving? Basically, it is to say thanks. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for giving -- what? Thanksgiving. What happened was tons of individuals left Europe and came and settled in Canada and America. These people were called "pilgrims". People -- also called them "settlers".

So these people came from Europe and lived in Canada or North America. They had nothing. So they planted seeds. They produced their own food. Luckily, they really were ready to grow within the soil in Canada and America, and that they gave thanks for the harvest. And as I've seen -- because Lincoln appeared to be a spiritual fellow -- he would thank God.

Who's God? I don't know. So it's actually -- in America, at this point, it had been quite a spiritual thing that they might thank God for giving them food. In Canada, however, in 1957, we were just very happy to possess a harvest. And "harvest" means food.

You spend a lot of your time planting seeds, watering seeds, growing the seeds. It's time to eat that. And that's called a "harvest". What do we do? What do we do on Thanksgiving? Well, we eat food. We eat food that's grown specifically, or ready specifically in October.

This includes things like squash or turnip or pumpkin. I'll draw you a picture. I'm not really good at drawing pictures of fruit -- but turnip or squash. We also have potatoes. I love potatoes. And the main food that we have on Thanksgiving is a big turkey.

Now, maybe you've never seen or had a turkey before. It looks sort of a chicken, except it's really, really much bigger and, in my opinion, not as tasty. Traditionally, for Thanksgiving, we're getting to have a turkey dinner with seasonal vegetables and gravy.

Also very, very, very, very fashionable in America is American football. They have, on Thanksgiving, an enormous American football competition where guys running around in spandex hug one another, throw a ball -- fun times. And food, food, food.

The other thing that they celebrate more in America than in Canada is that they have parades. In ny City, they're going to have a Thanksgiving parade where people will dress up like pilgrims or settlers and perhaps turkey, and that they would walk and celebrate the harvest in New York City."That sounds strange."

It's true. Do you have a vacation like this in your country that you simply celebrate the harvest in October or November? I think you might.