What gives with Thanksgiving?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., foxmoth at q... wrote:
>   
>     In other European-derived cultures, Christmas fulfilled the 
> social and family functions that Thanksgiving Day assumed.  

I know more about Britain than Europe. Various parts of Britain had 
various autumn (not Christmas) Harvest-related celebrations at 
various times, such as Lughnasadh / Lammas (Loaf-mass) in August, 
Michaelmas near Equinox, and Halloween / Samhain. I believe that the 
ghost of Lammas lingers in the form of August Bank Holiday (and in 
USA as Labor Day), and there are also Harvest Home services in 
churches on some Sunday in Autumn. 

> It was part of the same movement that brought us women's magazines
> and Mother's Day.

There was some American woman nothing better to do with her time than 
lobby state legislatures and Congress to establish a Mother's Day 
holiday, and the date she lobbied for was her own mother's birthday, 
but the idea of a holiday for mothers goes back a ways in England, 
where the fourth Sunday of Lent was called Mothering Sunday because 
all the boys and girls (young men and young women) who were away as 
apprentices or house servants were given that day off to go home and 
visit their mothers. The reprint of a Victorian book of then-quaint 
customs from which I got that info said that it was traditional for 
the young-uns to bring their mothers a simmel cake, which was 
described like fruitcake inside but the outside was so rock-hard that 
foreigners who were given simmel cakes didn't know what to do with 
them and one Frenchman broke a chisel trying to chisel one open. And 
the reprinter's footnote said that the old Mothering Sunday had been 
replaced by the American Mother's Day under the influence of GIs 
stationed or on leave in Britain during WWII.