OT Thanksgiving and Christmas was Re: Thoughts on Tarsyanian verbs

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@B...> wrote:
> Well, I guess you're right. Someone else from the list sent me a side-
note
> offlist and explained me why they are having Thanksgiving in Northern
> America. The motivation is similar (thanking God for food), but the
article
> "Erntedankfest" at de.wikipedia.org says that both "versions" of this
> holiday are not directly related. So we did not "import" the US'
Thanksgiving.
>
> C.
[Thanks-Giving Holidays]
I guess the answer is,
Only the U.S.A. and Canada have
*Annual*,
*National*,
Days of Thanks-Giving.
Apparently other countries do have "church-days" (as Carsten says).

Tom Wier, I think it is, points out that the U.S.A. didn't have a
national, annual day of Thanks-Giving until President Abraham Lincoln
started the custom in 1863 of proclaiming the last Thursday in every
November to be a National Day of Thanks-Giving.  Technically speaking,
Thanks-Giving Day was "whenever the President said it was", although
the custom of "the last Thursday in November" became entrenched until
Franklin Roosevelt's administration.
In order to stimulate the recovering-from-the-Great-Depression economy
with an extra week of Christmas shopping, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt decided to proclaim the National Day of Thanks-Giving on the
second-from-last (or perhaps third?) Thursday in November.  This
incensed many people, who derided it as "Frank's-Giving".  A compromise
was approved by both houses of Congress in 1942; Thanks-Giving Day was
set at the 4th Thursday in November.  Thus it would not be unreasonably
early the 5 years out of 7 that November had only 4 Thursdays, nor
would the Christmas shopping season be unreasonably short the remaining
2 years out of 7 that November had 5 Thursdays (i.e. Thanks-Giving Day
never falls on the 29th nor 30th of November any-more).

I do not know why Canada has a National Day of Thanks-Giving;
nor why no other country in the Western hemisphere has one;
nor why no English-speaking former colony of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland outside of the Western Hemisphere has one.

[AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS]
American Christmas customs come from nearly every country that American
immigrants have come from.

The Christmas tree came from Germany.
The Christmas balls in the tree came from the Medieval morality-plays'
idea of the Tree-of-Life:-- a tree that was always green and produced
fruit all year.  They would tie apples in an evergreen to give the idea.
The lights in the tree supposedly came from an idea of Martin
Luther's.  He was riding home one night and was struck by how beautiful
the stars looked as he saw them twinkling through the branches of the
trees.  When he got home he put candles in the trees near his house to
show his children what it looked like.  (Or so "they" say.)

Santa Claus came from the Dutch.

--------

Tom H.C. in MI

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