Harvest Sunday

...Thanksgiving, Guyanese style

By Fr. Ken MacAulay, S.F.M.
April 2000

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As we know, one of the big holidays in North America is Thanksgiving. People plan months ahead for Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the Plymouth colony in the United States in 1621 in thanksgiving to God for their first harvest.

Over the years in North America, Thanksgiving has become very much a family day. Family members make great effort and sometimes considerable sacrifice to come together and give thanks and celebrate as family.

In Guyana we do not have Thanksgiving Day, but we have something similar called Harvest Sunday. I was deeply impressed the first time I witnessed it. It was a case of the poor helping the poor.

On Saturday afternoon before Harvest Sunday, you see poor people coming to the church with various food items: fruit, vegetables, bread or perhaps a couple of eggs. Then on Saturday evening the whole church is decorated with the fruit and vegetables. There is a real community and family spirit. The young and the old are all excited as they prepare the church for the following morning.

Some people plant certain items so that they will be ready for Harvest Sunday. A banana plant grows for a year before it bears fruit. It is interesting to see two or three people carrying the whole banana plant, laden with bananas, to the church. The banana plant and sugar cane, which looks much like a stock of corn, are very decorative.

Sunday morning is a sight to behold—fruits and vegetables everywhere! The Mass, of course, is a Mass of Thanksgiving. You can sense a real feeling of gratitude as the poor thank God for the blessings they have received, especially that they have had something to eat during the past year.

After Mass there is great enthusiasm as volunteers gather all the food from the church and take it to poor families and to the nearby orphanage and senior citizens’ home. If there is more than enough, then the balance is sold and the money given to the St. Vincent de Paul Society or the Ladies of Charity to help the poor.

Here in Guyana there is no big Thanksgiving dinner. Rather, there is a feeling of satisfaction and contentment among the poor, that by their joint community efforts, they have been able to share the little they have and to help people even less fortunate than themselves.

Truly Harvest Sunday is a ‘Thanksgiving Day’ in which the poor help the poor. It is all so Christian.

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