In Canada, as well as the U.K. and Australia, December 26 is now better known as a day for scooping up shopping deals, similar to Black Friday in the U.S. Most stores open their doors early and discount prices on items ranging from clothing to technology to appliances.
In the United States, sugar cane is grown commercially in Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Texas and Puerto Rico. It could also be grown, and used to be, in much of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and nearly all of Mississippi.
From there, the Spanish developed sugar plantations in Jamaica and Puerto Rico. But sugar plantations really took off in Brazil under the Portuguese and Dutch, the cane initially being transplanted from Madeira in the 1540s. Two decades later, Brazil was producing 2,500 tons of sugar a year. The rise of the Brazilian sugar industry in the 16th century confirmed the importance of the plantation.