A friend sent me a note today wishing me a "Happy Thanksgiving!" While at first glance one might wonder if my friend is a little confused, the truth is today is Thanksgiving in Canada. Established by the Canadian Parliament in 1957, the holiday is celebrated on the second Monday of October. It is a harvest festival, designed to offer God thanks for the bounty of autumn's crops.

Though a recent incarnation in its present form, Canadians have been observing Thanksgiving in one way or another for centuries. One earlier celebration goes back to 1578, when Martin Frobisher marked a safe Atlantic crossing which ended in modern-day Newfoundland. And Canada's native population, the First Nation peoples, have held harvest celebrations and days of thanksgiving long before any Europeans set foot on Canadian soil.

My Masters thesis was a theological history of the Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. Well-known for their gorgeous furniture and their plaintive chants and songs, the Shakers were a profoundly grateful people. I had access to the daily logs that had been kept for almost two centuries by various clerks of the community, and shall never forget an entry made by Otis Sawyer on Thanksgiving Day (US) in 1880: "The good Shakers," he wrote, "need no president nor Governor to remind them of the duty of Thanksgiving, for not only one but everyday of the year their first breath in the morning is prayer and thanksfulness for many blessings everyday enjoyed."

He is so right! I think about my own life here on Sanibel. We're blessed with the beauty of the Gulf. We're blessed with spectacular night-time views of the stars and the moon. We're blessed by intriguing flora and fauna. There is so much for which to give thanks! So why wait until the second Monday in October, or the fourth Thursday in November? Why wait for Parliament or the President to declare a day of thanksgiving? Why not make it a daily celebration?