As you may know in America we celebrate thanksgiving. This is when the pilgrims and Indians had the big first feast! Obviously now we don’t celebrate all of what happened 400 some odd years ago. We’ve completely commercialized thanksgiving to turkey, gravy, football, the Macy’s Parade and Black Friday shopping. Although Thanksgiving is unique to America, other places celebrate some sort of fall feast. In this article I will go through 7 other countries that celebrate a fall feast. Most of these countries are European, and some of them even got inspiration from our celebration! These countries are Germany, Japan, Canada, Grenada, Liberia, The Netherlands and Norfolk Island.
First lets start off with Germany. Germany celebrates by eating a number of different roasts- Turkey, chicken, rooster, or goose. They decorate altars and doorsteps with flowers. They call this their Harvest Festival and its celebrated on the first Wednesday of October.
In Japan they celebrate Labor Thanksgiving Day. They are celebrated all laborers in their country. This is basically like our Labor Day, their holiday started in 1948 and isn’t a big crazy holiday like our thanksgiving.
Canada celebrates their own thanksgiving. It is very much like the American version in that they celebrate explorers founding their country. The explorers celebrated the first thanksgiving for Canada. Canadians celebrate on the second Monday of October.
For Grenada, this is a remembrance holiday. Not connected with America’s origins at all. It is held on October 25th, marking the anniversary of the 1983 U.S. military invasion to restore order after the death of their communist leader Maurice Bishop.
In Liberia thanksgiving is a holiday much inspired and influenced by the American tradition. Brought to Africa by white people, and Celebrated with dancing and feasts. Local fruit is brought to the churches.