Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Join host Michael Wolch this weekend for music dedicated to the harvest holiday, giving thanks to family, friends, food and more.

October keeps rolling along and Thanksgiving weekend is here already! A bit of history before I talk about the music:

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are more closely connected to the traditions of Europe than of the United States. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England, arrived in Newfoundland in 1578. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World. That means the first Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts!

For a few hundred years, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November, before it was declared a national holiday in 1879. It was then, that November 6th was set aside as the official Thanksgiving holiday. But then on January 31st, 1957, Canadian Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October, Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed." Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October because after the World Wars, Remembrance Day (November 11th) and Thanksgiving kept falling in the same week.

This year Canadian Thanksgiving is October 9th!

 

So, I have some Thanksgiving music for you about harvest, being thankful, sending prayers, and acknowledging family and friends. Here are a few samples;

 

 

 

 

 

We will also celebrate birthdays, symphonies and concertos in this weekend's edition of The Wide World of Classical Music. Every Saturday noon - 6:00pm, with your host Michael Wolch.