Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a very traditional holiday in the USA and Canada. How much do you know about it? 

Thanksgiving is a day of giving thanks for the blessing of harvest and the preceding year. In the USA it is always celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November while in Canada on the second Monday of October. 

Puritans

The modern Thanksgiving tradition is traced to a 1621 celebration in Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s brought the tradition of Thanksgiving to New England. In November 1621 the Pilgrims sat down to eat together and to give thanks to God for enabling them to survive the hardships of their first year in America. THe Pilgrims were joined at their first feast by local Amerindians. The Wampanoag and Pequamid people of the nearby forests had shared corn with the Pilgrims and shown them the best places to catch fish. Later the Amerindians had given seed corn to the English settlers and shown them how to plant crops that would grow well in the American soil. Without them there would have been no Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is traditionally a day for families and friends to get together for a special meal. The meal often includes a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie and vegetables. 

Glossary

Thanksgiving - Święto Dziękczynienia

blessing - błogosławieństwo

harvest - plony, zbiory

preceding - poprzedzający

is traced to - wywodzi się z

Pilgrims - pielgrzymi (pierwsi koloniści, którzy przybyli do Ameryki w 1920 roku)

Puritans - purytanie

enabling - umożliwianie

hardships - trudy

feast - uczta

Amerindians - Indianie

corn - kukurydza

seed - ziarno

settlers - osadnicy

plant - sadzić 

crops - plony

soil - gleba

get together - zebrać się razem

turkey - indyk

stuffing - farsz

potatoes - ziemniaki

cranberry sauce - sos żurawinowy

gravy - sos pieczeniowy

pumpkin pie - placek z dynią

Here you can watch a funny video about 5 shocking facts about Thanksgiving: