How The World Celebrates Thanksgiving
An estimated 87% of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. The United States isn’t the only country that has some form of Thanksgiving celebration. While the actual reasons why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving are unique to the United States, we are not the only country that has a celebration due to a successful harvest of food. Many countries have similar holidays that bring together their family and friends for a huge feast.
How is Thanksgiving celebrated in other countries?
Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated in October and has many similarities to the American version, with turkey dinners, fall produce, and dishes like stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. In Grenada Thanksgiving Day, it’s celebrated in October and marks the anniversary of the American-led invasion in 1983. The holiday features national parades, traditional foods like oil down stew, and community events. Liberian Thanksgiving is celebrated in November with religious church services and feasts of traditional Liberian dishes like cassava, greens, fish, chicken, and sometimes American foods like turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Filipino Thanksgiving in November includes family meals with turkey, ham, spring rolls, rice dishes, stuffed roast pig, and American staples like cranberry sauce combined with ube halaya yam pudding.
How do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe?
In Germany Erntedankfest is celebrated in early October, with church services, parades led by harvest wagons, and seasonal German foods like goose, duck, roasted pork, squash, potatoes, dumplings, and apple desserts. The UK has harvest festival traditions in October similar to the old rural English customs that inspired American Thanksgiving. In the Catalonia region of Spain, the Día de Acción de Gracias holiday coincides with the end of the wine grape harvest in early October. While the Netherlands has its own harvest traditions, some Dutch families have started adopting American Thanksgiving customs like turkey dinners. France puts its own spin on Thanksgiving dinner with French variant dishes like turkey stuffed with chestnuts, turkey burgers with brie.
Is Thanksgiving the same in every country? No, Thanksgiving traditions vary widely across different countries.
The Philippines
The Philippines celebrates Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, adopting the American date for the holiday. Family feasts mark the occasion with traditional Filipino dishes like lechon (roasted pig), lumpia (spring rolls), pancit (noodles), and ube halaya (purple yam dessert). Some younger generations have also incorporated American Thanksgiving staples like turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Giving back is also a key part of the holiday – many Filipinos mark the occasion by distributing food to the needy.
Saint Lucia
The little Caribbean island of Saint Lucia commemorates Thanksgiving on the first Monday in November. The holiday recognizes the island being spared from the devastating Hurricane Janet in 1955. Traditional dishes like seasoned rice, peas and meat stews are served. The event is marked with church services, community events, cultural performances and Creole food festivals.
Fiji
On Fiji’s island of Rotuma, thanks is given for the yam harvest in November during the annual rẅuma harvest festival. It lasts for nearly two weeks, culminating with a large community feast. The main feature is firō lifu, a pudding made of grated yams, coconut cream, and ripe bananas. Additional Rotuman Thanksgiving foods include puaka (roast pig), gafue fish, curried foods, and buttered peas. Song and dance are also central to the festivities.
Brazil
In Brazil, they celebrate “el Dia de Ao de Graas,” which means a day of Thanksgiving. The tradition began in 1949 after the ambassador of Brazil was inspired after a visit to the U.S. They celebrate on the 4th Thursday in November, but the entire country does not participate, as it is not an official holiday. Those that do follow the tradition have meals like we do with stuffing, turkey, mashed or sweet potato and pumpkin pie. In Brazil, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, just like in the USA, but with a unique Brazilian flair. The traditional Brazilian Thanksgiving meal includes foods like turkey, stuffing, ham, rice, beans, corn, sweet potatoes, pineapple and grated coconut. The meal is also accompanied by salads, pumpkin soup, and popular desserts like brigadeiros, which are chocolate bonbon truffles.
Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico, the Thanksgiving holiday is all about family, food and community. Lechón asado (roasted suckling pig) often takes center stage, substituted for turkey but keeping staples like yuca root, rice, pigeon peas and macaroni salad. Pumpkin flan, tembleque coconut pudding and arroz con dulce (sweet rice) are popular desserts. The day starts with church services then shifts gears to parades, festivals and music in town plazas. Puerto Rico celebrates Thanksgivukkah with its Latin flair when the days occasionally overlap.
Guatemala
Guatemala celebrates Thanksgiving on October 12th as part of Día de la Raza or Columbus Day. The holiday marks the arrival of the Spanish and Catholicism. Guatemalan Thanksgiving customs revolve around giving thanks for the harvest, especially corn and crops central to the culture. Foods include tamales wrapped in plantain leaves, stuffing, tortillas and Guatemalan rum. Many cities have parades, street festivals and fairs to commemorate the day.
Canada
Canada has actually been celebrating their own form of Thanksgiving long before we have been here in America. For them, the celebration started with the explorer Martin Frosbisher’s arrival in Newfoundland in 1578. After he landed in this New World, he had a small feast as a way to celebrate his safe arrival. Canadians celebrate their Thanksgiving every year on the second Monday in October. For the most part, the festivities are the same as those in the United States, with turkey and pie highlighting the feast. In most parts of the country, workers get the day off.
Germany
Germany’s celebration of Thanksgiving, known as Erntedankfest, has its roots in rural traditions celebrating the annual harvest. It is celebrated on the first Sunday of October. Typical symbols of the holiday include harvested crops, festive processions, and decorated churches. Foods commonly eaten include seasonal produce like apples, potatoes, plums and vegetables. Roast goose or duck are also traditionally served. Other key parts of German Thanksgiving festivities include music performances, worship services giving thanks to God for the harvest, and community fairs selling crafts, food and produce.
Spain
Spain celebrates Día de Acción de Gracias (Day of Thanks) mainly in the region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. It occurs in early October, coinciding with the final grape harvest of wine season. The celebration has its roots in history when tradespeople would come from France to sell products in Catalonia and get involved in the winemaking process there as well. Catalonians adopted the French tradition of slaughtering and preparing turkeys at the end of the harvest. Their Día de Acción de Gracias focuses on family meals featuring autumn fare from the harvest as a way to give thanks for what they have. The centerpiece dish is often turkey stuffed with stewed fruits like pears and plums.
United Kingdom
Britsgiving is the UK’s unofficial holiday version of Thanksgiving. With so many expats in Britain, it makes sense why it is celebrated there with many of the same foods we enjoy in the United States. While the American-style Thanksgiving is not officially celebrated in the UK, the harvest festival traditions that inspired it are still very much alive. Harvest festivals happen from late September through early October across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Decorated churches host special church services to offer thanks and mark the season. British harvest foods often include freshly picked apples and fruit, vegetables like cabbage and onions, breads, soups, roasted meats, and desserts topped with cream from the late summer dairy production. So, while the British don’t sit down for turkey dinner on the fourth Thursday of November per se, they still honor the harvest in their own varied ways.
Netherlands
The Netherlands has also started embracing more American Thanksgiving customs in recent years. Many Dutch families now gather together on the fourth Thursday of November for an American-style turkey dinner accompanied by Dutch seasonal produce like brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, cauliflower and oyster mushrooms. Pumpkin pie is also gaining fame as a new dessert option.
France
France has their own fall harvest festival in the autumn, yet American Thanksgiving has still caught on to a small extent, especially among younger generations. French Thanksgiving meals tend to put more of a Gauloise spin on the menu with dishes like turkey stuffed with chestnuts, turkey burgers with brie, vegetable tians, beet and frisée salad, Louisiana-style cranberries, pumpkin soup and chocolate mousse.
Ireland
Ireland celebrates Harvest Thanksgiving on the first Sunday in October. Church congregations gather for worship services and decorate the churches with autumn crops, particularly corn, wheat, potatoes and turnips. After church, families celebrate with large Sunday luncheons, including seasonal produce like roasted duck or goose. Spiced beef, broth, vegetables from the garden, apple tarts and roasted nuts are also popular Irish Thanksgiving foods.
Norfolk Island
Located in the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand, Norfolk Island commemorates American Thanksgiving each year. The tradition dates back to the influx of American whalers and traders to the island during the early to mid-1800s. Today, the Norfolk Island Thanksgiving meal typically consists of suckling pig meat along with chickens bred on the island. Other staple foods are yams, breadfruit, bananas, coconuts and fish caught fresh off the coastlines.
China
Every year, China celebrates the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival “Chung Chiu”. This festival takes place in September or October and coincides with the 8th lunar month’s 15th day. The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is a celebration of the end of the harvest season. One of the traditional foods eaten during this huge feast is mooncakes. These pastries are flaky and have various delectable fillings inside them. Mooncakes are round pastries that typically contain duck egg yolks, lotus seed paste, and sesame seeds. The yolk represents the full moon.
Vietnam
Vietnam also celebrates an autumn harvest holiday called Tết Trung Thu in September or October. It is a celebration for children, with colorful lanterns and lion dances performed at night under the full moon. The food traditions include sticky rice, fruits like grapes and persimmons, boiled vegetables, and mooncakes filled with mung bean paste or durian custard. Families celebrate together with the children parading outside carrying lanterns in the shape of animals or the full moon.
South Korea
South Korea’s Chuseok is celebrated in late September or early October. During this time, food from the fresh harvest is used to make a feast. Families get together to eat and share stories. It is a way to utilize the harvest and honor those who have passed. This celebration is also filled with dancing and costumes. One of the more traditional dishes eaten is called Songpyeon. It is a little cake made out of rice and filled with ingredients like beans. Chuseok is a 3 day celebration when Koreans return to their hometowns, prepare bountiful feasts, visit family tombs to pay respects to ancestors and perform traditional rituals like making songpyeon rice cakes. The foods prepared for Chuseok are fruits, vegetables, rice, and Korean pancakes called jeon.
Japan
While Japan doesn’t celebrate the American Thanksgiving per se, they have two fall harvest festivals that express gratitude for crops and bounty. Niiname-sai happens every November 23rd where the new rice crop is tasted, offered to the gods, and thanks is given for the successful harvest. Labor Thanksgiving Day (Kinrō kansha no hi) is celebrated on November 23rd as well. This public holiday honors labor and production, encouraging people to value the fruits of others’ efforts. All government entities in Japan are closed on this day in celebration. The origin of this Thanksgiving holiday dates back to the seventh century, around 678 A.D. It celebrated the upcoming harvest season, then as time went on it changed to honor farmers to honor workers. Special events are held across the country in honor of the holiday – Nagano Labour Festival.
South India
Pongal, is the name for this region’s harvest festival. The celebration is spread out over 4 days…..The first day they honor Indra, the king of the gods which is believed to control the clouds and the rain; on the 2nd day they honor Surya Pongal, their sun god with sugar cane sticks and a dish called sarkkarai pongal. On the 3rd day, shepherds pay thanks to bulls and cows. On the final day families get together and have a feast celebrating the year’s successful harvest.
Liberia
The West African nation of Liberia has celebrated Thanksgiving Day on the first Thursday of November since 1820. As a country founded by freed American slaves, Liberia adopted many American customs and traditions. During Liberia’s Thanksgiving celebrations, no matter one’s religion, attending church services where offerings are made to thank God for his bounty and mercy is common. Traditional Liberian Thanksgiving meals include cassava, rice, potatoes, greens, chicken and fish. Some families add an American touch with turkeys, yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies to their menus.
Grenada
The Caribbean island nation of Grenada commemorates Thanksgiving Day on October 25th. The holiday marks the anniversary of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada. During the American-led conflict, Grenadian forces were defeated within days. Many Grenadians welcomed the invasion as it led to the restoration of democracy and the ousting of an oppressive regime. Today, Grenadians celebrate the holiday with traditional foods like oil down, a stew made with saltfish, breadfruit, callaloo greens, carrots, coconut milk, dumplings, and spices. Community events and parades are also common ways to observe the occasion.
So we can see harvest celebrations and thanksgiving traditions take place around the world throughout the fall season, with each culture celebrating in its own unique way with local cuisine, customs and time-honored rituals. Although some of these celebrations are somewhat different from what we are used to in the United States, they have two things in common: family and good food. No matter how you choose to celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy the time with your loved ones and don’t forget to eat a delicious dish or two.
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