Canadian Thanksgiving: a not-so-traditional October celebration in A2

Our 2011 Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner in Ann Arbor 

Our family celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on October 9th this year with our annual community Open House party.

Over 90 family, friends, neighbors and colleagues stopped in from 3 to 10pm to sip apple cider, share a glass of sangria, munch on sandwiches, salads and maple-baked beans and to plow through over 70 pieces of pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream.

How do you host an open house this big in a place this small?  You try not to have too much of it actually take place in the house.  You clean up, clear out the clutter, pull up the carpets, open the doors and set some chairs up outside.  Basically, you host a picnic.

We arranged the food (most of it cold picnic items with only two dishes served hot over chafers), wine and dessert tables inside -- we took our tv, extra photos and various other extra items out of our living room.

My Scandinavian teak furniture unfolds and expands for serving buffets on multiple surfaces:  the credenza expands to 70 inches long while two hidden leaves expand the dining room table to 124 inches.  I love these furniture pieces (picked up second-hand years ago) because they are so flexible -- and they return to their smaller-scale forms during the rest of the year.  The space we used indoors to host measures just under 370 sq ft.

Desserts went on the stretched-out credenza while a large red "ice bucket" for chilled wine and sangria sat on the dining room table with our not-so-traditional Canadian Thanksgiving dinner spread.  It was a passable spread but then -- like magic and like always -- even more generously arrived with our guests.  Such delicious treats came our way -- thank you, all!

We set it up that morning/early afternoon with help from my brother and sister-in-law.  My family and I stripped our living area  -- our "event space" -- down to the basic elements of furniture and decor, much like you would for a realtor's open house.  In our invites, we asked our guests to bring chairs and blankets for our picnic area outside.

We put covered bowls of snacks (like my favorite imported dill pickle chips) and ice-filled coolers of beer and Canada Dry ginger ale (of course) outside and set up a large 10-person tent for the kids to use.  I used to call that tent our "spare room" in the summer as it added 132 sq ft to our living space.

After re-arranging the deck with red-decorated tables and chairs, my event crew covered folding buffet tables outside for our non-perishable snacks, like the chips, pretzels and cookies for the kids.  My kids pulled out soccer balls, frisbees and footballs for anyone game to play in our big shared common backyard/playground, a beautiful outdoor feature of life in Pittsfield Village Condos.

Finally, my husband lit a mighty blaze in the fire-pit and gathered all of our folding chairs around it in a circle pulling it together for our guests in our great outdoors.

We can't plan this kind of outdoor event too far in advance.  Fortunately, we have not been rained out for this in the 8 years that we have hosted.  As each October unfolds, I obsessively monitor the weather forecast -- as if my very survival depended on it -- for approximately 10 days in advance.  I send the save-the-date out then, too.  I let everyone know that the party is officially on just a few days before.  It's quite the autumn ritual.

The after-glow on our table as the party started to fade.

A big part of the charm of this holiday for me in Ann Arbor is this amazing, early-autumn weather of ours.
It is often a classic, clear, crisp and sunny day on or around our traditional harvest holiday, celebrated officially up north on the second Monday of October.

Our day this year was nothing less than perfect:  a bright sun in the blue, cloudless sky kept the temps in the high 70's, low 80's until it set.  Then, with the fire-pit roaring late into the evening, guests enjoyed a rare Michigan mosquito-less night around the  fire.

Although we tell our guests each year that what we host is not a "traditional Canadian Thanksgiving", there is something quite traditionally Canadian about it:  we thoroughly enjoy the good weather, good food and good company!

I'm so thankful every October for all of these things.