Podcast 14 No Thanksgiving For The British
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving.
You probably noticed.
Last Friday was black Friday. You know, the crazy weekend of shopping deals and discounts that occurs over the holiday weekend.
Not forgetting Cyber Monday, which is like Black Friday, but online. And on a Monday!
Do you know which country these traditions come from?
The good, old US of A of course!
Thanksgiving I’ve known about for a while. The UK and France recently copied Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Even though Thanksgiving is an American tradition, in France, people often ask me – do you celebrate thanksgiving?
The answer if of course a big, fat no!
And my reaction is – you clearly have no idea what thanksgiving is about. If you did, then you wouldn’t be asking me!
So, I thought this particular topic deserved a quick podcast to clear up the confusion.
You’ll never make the mistake of asking a British person if they celebrate thanksgiving again!
Huge disclaimer: I did actually celebrate thanksgiving last Saturday, but only because I have an American friend who organises a thanksgiving dinner every year! But, that still doesn’t make it a British holiday!
Before You Listen
Take a look at the wordcloud below.
Make a table with 3 columns. Put the words from the wordcloud into the columns.
| Food | People | Places |
When you’re done, it should look a bit like this.
| Food | People | Places |
| turkey | Pilgrim Fathers | New World |
| sweet potatoes | Puritans | Plymouth in the southwest of England |
| mashed potatoes, | Settlers | USA |
| cranberry sauce | Colonists | England |
| pumpkin pie | Indians | New England |
| pecan pie | Friends | (France) |
| Harvest | Family |
Listen again and make some more notes about
– Who celebrates thanksgiving
– The history of thanksgiving – who, what, when, where, why
Use the words from the table to help you.
While Listening
As usual, I’ve picked out some sections for you to transcribe. Listen to them several times and write down what you hear. The answers are underneath. Good luck!
Podcast 14 Dictations
Dictation Answers
Here are the transcribed sections of each dictation. Which words or expressions did you find difficult to catch? Let me know in the comments.
Dictation 1: So I was very happy to you know to celebrate, well basically the celebration is just eating all that food um, but yeah.
Dictation 2: but it didn’t actually become a national holiday until 1863.
Dictation 3: I don’t think it’s really a religious holiday nowadays. In any case when I researched a bit that’s yeah, it wasn’t really, it doesn’t really have a religious um, element anymore.
Over To You
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. I’d love to hear from you in the comments – did you know the Thanksgiving story? Did you celebrate Thanksgiving last week?
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It seems they started to celebrate the Thanksgiving in Armenia too. Firstly, many Diaspora Armenians have returned to Armenia due to the international situation and they’ve brought the celebration too. Secondly, social media is contagious, and we have been having many Armenian podcasts on Thanksgiving for the last few years.
Btw, I’ve done well with the dictation. I wrote” was searching” instead of “researched” and “thus”(which sounded strange to me) instead of “that’s yeah”.
Thanks for your comment Lusine. Yes, it’s funny how some traditions are spreading to other countries through social media and other channels. Dictations are funny – you know that what you’ve written can’t be right from a logical point of view, but it’s not until you see the written answer that you finally “get it”.