While the US has a cultural stronghold on the Thanksgiving holiday (28 November), did you know its iterations also include Canada, Germany and Brazil?

Ask someone from the US about the origins of Thanksgiving and you might get a story about pilgrims and the Native American tribes that helped them survive their first winter. But Days of Thanksgiving actually pre-date the English colonisation of the country by some decades.

The pilgrim story can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century with the emergence of the formal practice of ‘giving thanks’, a church-decreed holiday where attendees were expected to pray, sing and feast in response to a God-given boon: a good harvest, rain after drought or recovery from illness, for example, or even 1588’s victory over the Spanish Armada. These were offered throughout the year rather than at a set time; the first one recorded in the US was when the ship Margaret safely arrived in Virginia on 4 December 1619.

Thanksgiving is thus a combination of a harvest festival – Canada’s, celebrated on the second Monday of October, was declared in parliament as “A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed” – and a religious holiday, though it has increasingly become secularised.

Other cultures and religions also have ‘thank you’ celebrations: Homowo is the festival of the Ga people of Ghana that commemorates an historical famine and affirms current abundance; the Jewish festival of Sukkot has roots in both harvest and gratitude and is said to be the precursor to Christian Thanksgiving; and Koreans have Chuseok, which doubly pays homage to good harvest and respect to ancestors.

And for what do tea-drinkers have to be thankful? Well Australian tea growers have harvested their spring flush, while in the northern hemisphere the autumn flush is just about ripe for sipping, including the underrated Darjeeling autumnal harvest. Many other kinds of tea, such as charcoal-roasted oolongs, have concluded their roasting sequence and undergone their requisite resting period and are now ready for savouring.

If you don’t believe in the same God as the Protestants, not to worry – you can always give your thanks to Shennong, China’s Divine Farmer and father of tea.

Did you know? Australian territory Norfolk Island celebrates Thanksgiving on the last Wednesday in November each year (in 2024, that’s 27 November). The holiday began in the late 19th century due to the presence of American whaling ships.

This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 26 November 2024.