Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
It is November and there is a major holiday that is coming up here this week in the United States.
If you're listening to this episode when it comes out, it is the last week of November, and on the last Thursday of every November, we have a holiday here called Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays of the year, one of the most important holidays here in the United States.
And I wanted to talk about it on today's episode.
I wanted to talk about how people celebrate Thanksgiving and what you can expect to find people doing if you go to a Thanksgiving Day dinner.
So if you're interested in learning about how Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, what the traditions are here in the United States, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, just a quick reminder to look in the description of this podcast episode and all of our previous podcast episodes.
You will find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use so you can take these words and start studying them and building your vocabulary.
Now, let's talk about Thanksgiving.
Like I said, Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays here in the United States.
It is right in the middle of the holiday season.
Now, the holiday season is from October, when we have Halloween, through New Year's on January 1st.
Now, let's talk about the Thanksgiving Day traditions.
One thing I'm going to say is if you are someone who has watched the TV show Friends, if you've used that to try to learn English, there is an episode that is about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day.
And if you keep that episode in mind, that episode has a lot of the culture of Thanksgiving in it.
So the first tradition when we're talking about Thanksgiving is food.
Thanksgiving is a holiday that is closely associated with food, that is associated with eating as much food as possible.
And the reason Thanksgiving is so associated with food is because it originally was a harvest festival, a time to celebrate a good harvest and the abundance of food, which means how much food you had.
And so Thanksgiving is really tied to food.
Last year, I actually did an entire episode on all of the most popular Thanksgiving Day foods.
If you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to leave an icard for you so you can check out that episode.
If you're interested in learning more about the food of Thanksgiving, watch that episode or listen to that episode, because I do go over all of the most popular foods.
It takes a lot of time to make a Thanksgiving meal.
It's a lot of work.
So if you go to someone's house, you will usually see them preparing this large meal to have with their family.
Like I said, the meal is usually a dinner.
Thanksgiving Day dinner is traditionally what you have on Thanksgiving Day.
But sometimes you could also have it earlier.
For example, I like to have a Thanksgiving Day lunch.
I like to eat earlier on and just kind of eat the entire day to have more time to spend eating.
And sometimes people have Thanksgiving Day lunch if they have multiple places they need to go to.
So for example, if you have a partner, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, husband or wife, and you want to go celebrate with your family and they want to go celebrate with their family, sometimes what happens is some people go have lunch at one place with one family and then go have dinner with their other
family. That can happen.
So sometimes people do have a lunch and a dinner.
And so for that reason, it doesn't always have to be a dinner.
Sometimes people have their big meal early on in the day.
But usually, traditionally, it is a Thanksgiving Day dinner.
No matter what you have, a Thanksgiving Day lunch or a Thanksgiving Day dinner, the centerpiece of the table, which means the big item on the table, the thing that everyone is looking at is turkey.
Turkeys are closely associated with Thanksgiving.
You will see images of turkeys on advertisements, on cards about Thanksgiving, on decorations for Thanksgiving.
It is the food that is most closely associated with Thanksgiving.
And if you check out that episode of the most popular foods, it is one of the foods that I talk about.
On most Thanksgiving tables, you will find a turkey at the center of the table.
Now, I say most because not everyone likes turkey.
Some people say it's a little bit dry and they don't like eating it.
Other people like me, for example, are vegetarian.
So they don't eat turkey.
I never have turkey on Thanksgiving Day, but I would say it is the most popular food item.
It's the thing that you're most likely going to see.
Because turkey is so associated with Thanksgiving, last year I did an episode on idioms that involved turkey.
So if you're interested in learning some English idioms, some English sayings that we say that have the word turkey in it, I will leave an I card for you so you can also check that episode out.
And if you think to that Friends episode, if you think of that turkey being on someone's head, like I said, that Friends episode has a lot of cultural references and you can see in that episode the turkey having a big place in the comedy of the episode and turkey just has a big place in the traditional
of Thanksgiving Day dinner.
While people are cooking and getting all of that food ready, what you will also usually see in the background is some type of program on TV.
Now, in the mornings, one of the traditional things that's on TV is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade occurs in New York City on Thanksgiving, the last Thursday of November every year.
Macy's is a department store here in the United States, a very well -known department store, and they are the ones that sponsor the parade.
That's why it's called the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Last year, I did an episode on traditional Christmas movies, and in one of the Christmas movies, Miracle on 34th Street, the Thanksgiving Day Parade has a big part to do with the story.
That really shows you how important the Thanksgiving Day Parade is, how much cultural impact it has.
The Thanksgiving Day Parade usually involves some celebrities on some floats in the parade.
It also involves a lot of balloons, so you'll see these giant balloons of different characters, some popular animated characters that children like, and it's just a family -friendly event.
Santa is always there, so it's one of those things that families can enjoy together.
If you're in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, of course, you can go and see it yourself, but if you're in the United States, it's always on TV.
It's usually on NBC, which is one of the major broadcasting stations here in the United States, and it's just one of those traditions that it's on every Thanksgiving Day morning.
Now, I'm on the west coast, so it's really early if they show the parade live over here because the parade occurs in New York City, but it is one of those traditions.
I am used to turning on the TV on Thanksgiving Day and seeing the Macy's Day Parade on TV.
After the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, there's also the National Dog Show, and the National Dog Show is sponsored by one of the dog food brands here in the United States, which is Purina, and the National Dog Show occurs in Philadelphia every year.
So if you watch the Macy's Day Parade right after the parade, they switch and they start showing the dog show.
Like I said, it's one of those traditional things.
Not everyone likes watching dog shows, but it always comes on right after the parade.
So if you're watching the parade with your kids, the dog show comes on next, and you can watch that with them as well.
It's another family -friendly event.
And for me, it is one of the things I think about when I think of Thanksgiving.
Now, besides the family -friendly events, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the National Dog Show, another important thing that's on TV is football.
Now, when I say football, I am not talking about what we call soccer and what the rest of the English -speaking world calls football.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about American football.
Football is closely associated with Thanksgiving Day.
The reason is, is that traditionally there is a football game that is on TV on Thanksgiving Day.
If you're watching TV on Thanksgiving Day, you can find a football game on TV, and that is one of the things that people like to watch.
If you're getting things ready, if you're still preparing the food and preparing the table, you can turn the TV on and they can watch the football game.
So it's one of those things for people to do while they're waiting for their Thanksgiving Day dinner.
Besides watching football, you might also go play some football yourself.
Thanksgiving is usually an event that you have with your friends and family members.
Sometimes you can have a lot of people at your house, and if you have a lot of people, they can go in the backyard and they can start playing some football.
Like I said, you'll see a lot of football references in that Friends episode because a lot of people do play football on a Thanksgiving Day.
Someone can bring a football to a Thanksgiving Day dinner, and people can go outside and start throwing it back and forth.
And that can be just something to do to pass the time, which means something to do to take up time while you're waiting for that Thanksgiving Day dinner.
And it's just one of those popular things.
Another form of exercise on a Thanksgiving is something called a turkey trot.
Like I said, turkey is the food that is associated with Thanksgiving.
And so a turkey trot is a cute way of putting turkey in the name, trying to associate it with Thanksgiving.
Now, a trot means a run.
It's another way of saying a run.
So this is not an event where you take a turkey and you go run with it.
Instead, it's an event where you go and run.
However, if you just say a run, it doesn't sound as cute, doesn't sound as pleasant, as nice as saying a turkey trot.
So a turkey trot is a cute way of saying that people get together and go for a run together.
Now, it might be a short run.
And I will say it usually is a short run, something like a five kilometer run.
But the reason that it's become popular in recent years is because Thanksgiving is so associated with food and with eating a lot of food.
Sometimes people feel like they eat too much and they feel a little bit heavy because they ate so much food.
A turkey trot is a way of burning off those calories.
The idea is that you go on Thanksgiving, you go to a turkey trot, you go and run and you burn some calories, you're a little bit physically active.
And so that way when you go and eat a Thanksgiving day dinner, you feel a little bit better.
You don't feel so bad about eating so much food and so much rich, high calorie food.
Turkey trots have become more popular in recent years.
The town that I work in actually has a turkey trot every year.
I have never gone to one.
I don't really have an interest in going to one.
But if you do, you can go to a turkey trot.
And if you're in the United States for Thanksgiving, you can look and see if your town has a turkey trot.
And people go Thanksgiving morning and go go for a run together.
Another traditional activity that people do for Thanksgiving is give back to charity.
Thanksgiving, like I said, is a harvest festival, but it's also a time where people are supposed to get with their friends and family member and give thanks.
That's where the name comes from.
You're supposed to be thankful for what you have, for all of the blessings that you have in your life.
If you have food, you have friends, you have family members.
And it's a time to just reflect and be grateful for the blessings that you have in your life.
A lot of people will do charity on Thanksgiving Day to try to help share with other people who are less fortunate.
There are places where people can go if they don't have homes, if they're homeless, or if they are just in need of food.
Maybe they can't afford a Thanksgiving Day dinner by themselves.
Maybe it's too much money and they can't afford that.
So there are places.
They're usually called missions or called shelters.
Usually these places have Thanksgiving Day dinners.
So people can donate food or they can help donate their time.
They can help cook the food or pass the food out to people, which means give the food to people who are in need.
And that is one of the traditional things that some people do for Thanksgiving.
You will find a lot of charity events on Thanksgiving Day.
So if you're interested, you can check out your local community and see if they have something like that.
So charity is one of those activities that people do on Thanksgiving Day.
And then there's the opposite of charity, which is Black Friday.
Like I said, Thanksgiving is always, always on a Thursday.
And because it's on a Thursday, most people have that Friday after Thanksgiving off work as well.
Because people have the day off, there was something that started here in the United States called Black Friday.
With Thanksgiving being at the end of November, it's usually about a month away from Christmas.
And Christmas is the biggest gift giving holiday that we have in the United States.
It's the time where you have to buy gifts for people who are closest to you.
For that reason, stores like to do sales and do advertisements because the day after Thanksgiving is considered to be the first day of the Christmas shopping season.
Traditionally, retail stores would open early on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
They would open really early in the morning, like 5 or 6 a .m.
They would open their stores, they'd have some very special deals on items that people would want to buy for themselves or to give as gifts for Christmas.
I say that is traditionally when stores would open.
When I was younger, when I was a kid, I would go with my mom.
I remember getting up extremely early in the morning, getting the advertisements from the newspaper, looking at all of the sales and determining where we wanted to go.
And then we would go first thing in the morning, extremely early.
However, stores started wanting to open earlier and earlier.
More people in the last decade have been shopping online and so stores really wanted to keep people coming into the store and buying things at the physical stores.
They started opening even earlier.
About 10 years ago, they started opening at midnight on Thanksgiving.
Instead of spending Thanksgiving with your family, going to sleep and giving up early, you would have Thanksgiving Day with your family and then you would go shopping at midnight.
I can say I am one of the people who went at midnight.
I've been to stores at midnight to go shopping.
Then stores started even trying to open even earlier.
They started actually being open on Thanksgiving Day and that created some controversy.
People didn't like that stores were open on Thanksgiving Day.
The thinking was that those employees deserved a day off.
They deserved to be able to spend a Thanksgiving Day with their family members instead of working at some retail store or department store.
And there was a lot of backlash, which means that people weren't happy with it and they complained a lot.
If you've seen images of Black Friday, you've seen a lot of people going into a store at once.
You might have seen how many people go Black Friday shopping and how crazy it can get how many people can be in the store at one time.
People thought if these employees have to deal with all of these crowds, if they have to deal with all of these people shopping at the same time, they should at least be able to enjoy the day off with their family and enjoy their Thanksgiving with their family, stress -free and not worrying about work.
So I would say there's some change.
There have been less stores that are open on Thanksgiving Day and they're going back to that Black Friday model of opening either on Friday or at midnight.
Also, a lot of people are doing their shopping online.
So there's less people that are going to the stores.
So there's less reason for stores to be open on Thanksgiving Day.
Of course, with more people shopping online, there are also online sales.
The Monday after Thanksgiving is traditionally called Cyber Monday.
You will find special deals on Amazon and all of the big retail stores and all of the online stores as well.
You can find deals to buy.
And of course, to get back to that charity thing, there's also something called Giving Tuesday.
So if you have bought a lot of stuff on Black Friday and Cyber Monday for yourself and your family members to give us gifts for Christmas, maybe you feel a little bit like you should give back to charity.
And that's what Giving Tuesday is.
It's the Tuesday after Thanksgiving where you can give back to people and you can give to charities, give to organizations that are helping people or animals or something like that.
And that's considered to be the big donation day where you can go and give money to charity or volunteer with charity.
And that is called Giving Tuesday.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you learned a little bit about the Thanksgiving Day traditions and how Thanksgiving is celebrated here in the United States.
I also hope that you learned some vocabulary that you helped your listening comprehension and learned some new words and phrases that maybe you hadn't heard before.
A reminder to check out the description of this episode so you can find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I used.
That way you can put them in your own learning system and hopefully start using them in conversation yourself.
If you're watching on YouTube, please leave me a comment.
Tell me if you've been to a Thanksgiving Day celebration if you enjoyed it.
And also tell me if you liked this particular episode.
There is a lot of cultural events here in the United States that I could talk about, but I don't know if you want me to talk about them unless you tell me.
So tell me if you enjoyed this episode, if you liked learning about Thanksgiving traditions here in the United States, and if you would like more episodes like this in the future.
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All of you who have been supporting the podcast because we have grown so much over the past year, and I just want to say that I'm thankful for all of you.
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Until then, keep learning English.
