ST. MARTIN (December 1, 2003) — St. Martin’s Thanksgiving Day takes place every year on the first Sunday of each December. The 2003 Thanksgiving will be observed on December 7.
The Thanksgiving observation for both parts of the island comes out of the nation’s traditional culture, according to the book National Symbols of St. Martin. The national day marks the end of the hurricane season and for which folks give thanks to God for being spared from the ravages of the dreaded storms.
Up to the early 1970s, Thanksgiving was marked by church services throughout the island in late September, around the time of the year that the older heads called “When the sun crossed the line.”
Interestingly, it was during and after the onset of the tourism boom of the 1970s when this holy day was dropped by the wayside by both home and church. The idea and call for the island-wide observance of Thanksgiving in home, school and church was rekindled in the late 1980s by Newsday articles and in the 1990 edition of National Symbols of St. Martin.
In the mid-1990s, touched off by the more developed second edition of National Symbols, a St. Maarten Guardiancampaign and the efforts of Commissioner of Education Sarah Wescott-Williams with the Ecumenical Council of Churches the first formal Thanksgiving in some 20 years was celebrated in December of 1996—following the official end of the Atlantic Hurricane season.
But why move St. Martin’s Thanksgiving from September to December? “When the sun crossed the line” is in fact the Autumnal Equinox, which occurs around or “near September 22 in the northern hemisphere when night and day are nearly of the same length and Sun crosses the celestial equator moving southward (in the northern hemisphere),” points out astronomer Eric Weisstein.
The historical and climactic experience of traditional and modern St. Martiners points to early September as a general period after which the island is relatively safe from hurricanes. But the scientific fact of hurricane activity from June 1 to November 30 each year, and the odd occurrence of a gale striking St. Martin after the first week of September, even as late as November, makes the first Sunday of December a better day for Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving, St. Martin.