Brazil
Wikimedia CommonsThe Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil celebrates their Thanksgiving holiday on the same day that Americans do, on the last Thursday in November. The holiday is called Dia de Ação de Graças, and apparently, many of its festivities were inspired by American traditions.
The unconfirmed story of how Brazil’s Thanksgiving came to be, says that the country’s ambassador to the U.S. went on a trip to the States in November, sometime in the 1940s. He happened to be there to witness the way Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and loved the tradition.
The ambassador came back to Brazil and proposed that they create their own version of the holiday.
Brazil’s Thanksgiving also has a religious element to it, whereas Thanksgiving in the States is specifically a nondenominational holiday.
Dia de Ação de Graças begins with a church service in the morning, where churchgoers give thanks for the upcoming autumn harvest season. After that, a carnival ensues for the rest of the day.
Brazilians eat pretty much the same Thanksgiving Day foods that Americans eat, except they elect to replace cranberry sauce with jabuticaba, a grapetree fruit, sauce.
But this version of Thanksgiving apparently isn’t celebrated by many in Brazil. The Thanksgiving tradition that’s truly caught on is actually Black Friday.
