English Listening Podcast - Thanksgiving

welcome to the listening Time Podcast hey everybody this is Connor and you're listening to episode 1029 of the listening Time Podcast thank you all for listening I hope you're all doing well I hope that your English learning is going great and at the time that this episode is released it will be the week of Thanksgiving here in the US and so that's what I want to talk about today I'm going to talk about Thanksgiving I'll talk about this holiday uh the origins of the holiday some of the food that people like to eat here uh

on Thanksgiving and uh I'll talk about some of the things that I'm thankful for uh from this year from 2023 so hopefully you'll enjoy this episode and a lot of people are curious about Thanksgiving because it's not something that you have all around the world it's more of a regional thing in the US I think in Canada I'm not sure where else but uh you don't have Thanksgiving uh all over the world so a lot of people are curious about this topic if they've never celebrated Thanksgiving in the US before so we'll talk about that

today and and remember that if you feel ready to practice with real conversations uh in which I speak to a native speaker and we talk normally and naturally then make sure to sign up for my us conversations podcast I release one new episode every month and it's a long conversation between me and someone else from a different part of the us and of course you have the transcript uh for each episode and you also have the definitions of key words and phrases uh that we use during the conversation so if you're interested in that make

sure to click on the link in the episode description below this episode that's patreon.com USC conversations and if you want my training for your pronunciation and you're listening then make sure to join my membership so you can get my specialized training to help you uh pronounce English better and also listen and understand more effectively so the link is also in the description below this episode and if you like this podcast please share it with anyone else you know who's learning English and give it a five-star rating and write a review all right let's get started

are your ears ready you know what time it is it's listening time okay let's talk about Thanksgiving first let me talk a little bit about the origins of Thanksgiving uh where it came from so it's generally believed that Thanksgiving originated in the year 1621 so what was happening at that time well there were English settlers who we would call pilgrims that came over on the Mayflower ship this was maybe the most famous ship that went back and forth uh between uh Europe and what is now the US right um that went back and forth between

uh Europe and America right and so uh these pilgrims are the people who came uh starting in 1620 I believe and then all throughout the 1620s they came um taking this Mayflower ship and they established Plymouth Colony and that's in Massachusetts okay so this is one of the most famous colonies that the English settlers established in the US it was the second per colony in America so it was one of the most significant ones and so these pilgrims uh who established the Plymouth Colony they uh were in contact with some of the native people so

specifically um for this Thanksgiving story we're talking about the Wampanoag people so these are Native Americans who were here uh prior to uh the English settlers coming when we say prior to something we're saying before something so prior to the Mayflower bringing the pilgrims over uh these Wampanoag people were already there and of course there was a lot of contact between the settlers and these Natives and in 1621 there was an Autumn Harvest f East so uh Autumn referring to the season of course and the Harvest referring to um the crops that you grow uh

on your land and then you uh Harvest them and then you can eat them uh and use them in different ways that's the Harvest part and then a feast a feast just refers to a big meal that you have uh with multiple people right so they had an Autumn Harvest Feast um with the pilgrims and the wamp Noak people and so that is what most people believe uh to be the first Thanksgiving meal was that meal that Feast that they shared I don't know if this is accurate and I think that no one can say

100% for sure if this is accurate but I think that that's what is generally considered to be true so that's a little bit about the first Thanksgiving so now what is Thanksgiving about because at that time it was an Autumn feast and it was between two different groups of people right um and there was some significance to that that the natives were eating with the settlers and sharing this meal together nowadays that's not uh the thing that most people think about when they think about Thanksgiving now Thanksgiving is generally thought of to be a day

where you get together with your family you eat an amazing meal and you show gratitude for the things that you have when we say that you show gratitude we're saying that you express the fact that you're thankful for things so that's more or less what people think about today when they think about Thanksgiving and I want to mention that Thanksgiving is not the most important holiday in the US in my opinion so I get this question all the time or I hear people say this all the time from other countries that I talk to they

say uh Thanksgiving seems like the most important holiday in the US uh they'll have this assumption and I would definitely disagree with this I would say that Christmas is by far the most important holiday Thanksgiving might be number two for a lot of people um but it's not number one for most people so for example I went many years without celebrating Thanksgiving because I didn't live near my family and I didn't come back home for Thanksgiving and it was sad but it wasn't um a huge deal I wasn't completely depressed that I wasn't celebrating Thanksgiving

however when I uh was not home for Christmas I had to celebrate Christmas with someone with some people because I can't imagine not celebrating Christmas one year however I I can uh imagine not celebrating Thanksgiving because I didn't celebrate it for almost a decade so um it's not as important as Christmas in my opinion but it's an important holiday okay now let me talk a little bit about some of the food that we eat on Thanksgiving so the meal that we have on this holiday is similar to the meal that we have on Christmas so

the dishes are very similar and a lot of them are the same the biggest difference is that Thanksgiving is famous for turkey and uh this is kind of the protagonist of the meal for many families right this is the main character let's say um for Christmas some people eat turkey that's true however I think that that it's more common to eat ham on Christmas and this is one of my favorite things uh during the Christmas meal is eating ham so I associate ham with Christmas and turkey with Thanksgiving however the side dishes are very similar

and a lot of them are the same so I just refer to all of this as holiday food in the us and this is one of the best things about celebrating these holidays in the US uh compared to maybe uh celebrating Christmas in other countries because the US has a lot of food that is uh meant for these holidays so there is a lot of food that's specifically linked to these holidays and I know you have this in other countries as well however in my experience talking to students from different countries and living in Mexico

for many years there usually isn't as much specific holiday food that you only eat during this season during the Thanksgiving or Christmas season whereas in the US there are a lot of dishes where if you just say the name of the dish immediately people think of Christmas or they think of Thanksgiving so that was one of my complaints when I celebrated Christmas in Mexico is I felt that uh there was some holiday food but not nearly as much as in the US because a lot of the holiday food that we ate in Mexico is food

that you might also eat during other parts of the Year there are some things that are definitely associated with with Christmas however in my experience uh not as much as um the holiday food in the US so for example if you think of uh the Christmas ham uh if you see the sight of that ham that's sliced uh in thin slices you automatically think of Christmas or if you see a turkey coming out of the oven then you automatically think of Thanksgiving and there are other dishes like this as well for example stuffing so this

is kind of a wet bread pudding uh I guess you could call it that traditionally was stuffed inside the turkey uh to cook with the turkey however you don't need to do that uh and uh I've read that it can actually be dangerous if uh you don't do it correctly but that's where the name comes from stuffing right it was stuffed in the meat of the turkey so if someone says the word stuffing you immediately think of Thanksgiving usually another one is cranberry sauce there's this special sauce that um it it's really delicious and it

kind of enhances the other dishes the word enhance refers to making something better uh and so when I say that the cranberry sauce enhances other dishes I'm saying that you can eat the cranberry sauce with these other side dishes or with the turkey and it uh creates a really delicious combination I like eating turkey with this cranberry sauce so that's a really tasty combo in my opinion and then with the turkey there is white meat and dark meat so I prefer dark meat because it has more flavor um but some people like white meat so

the turkey has both it has white meat and dark meat and people will normally ask you do you want white or dark right in my opinion if you eat White meat then you should pair it with this cranberry sauce when I say that you pair something with something else this means that you um put the two things together so I think that the white meat can be a little bit dry and without a lot of flavor so I like to pair it with the cranberry sauce and this enhances the uh experience the the flavor of

the turkey so cranberry sauce is another one that people will immediately associate with Thanksgiving usually and another one could be sweet potato casserole this is one of my favorite dishes because it's not a dessert however it's sweet so it's kind of an interesting side dish where you have these sweet potatoes which are are in general sweet right um and then you can also put things like uh brown sugar or marshmallows or things like that um that can make it even sweeter uh if you don't know what a marshmallow is this is that white uh soft

food that you usually roast over a fire when you're camping this is a marshmallow so some people add marshmallows to the this sweet potato casserole and it's really delicious I've never had a bad sweet potato casserole it's kind of hard to go wrong with this dish so that's another one where if you say that people immediately think of Thanksgiving or Christmas and one other one that I like is green bean casserole so this is another casserole that you bake in the oven and uh it's with green beans and other things usually this is uh associated

with holidays with Thanksgiving and Christmas so that's another one and then there are other dishes that we can have uh at other times during the year but they're also very um uh related to these two holidays so for example um mashed potatoes and gravy you can eat that anytime throughout the year however um it's hard hard for me to imagine a Thanksgiving meal without mashed potatoes and without gravy so that's one that's not uh just particular to Thanksgiving however I can't imagine Thanksgiving without it and there are other things like dinner rolls uh a roll

in this context refers to uh a piece of bread it's usually really fluffy on the inside it's soft and delicious uh you add butter to it um it's really good my mouth is watering just thinking about it by the way when we say that your mouth is watering we're saying that you are salivating your uh mouth is producing saliva because you're imagining eating something we say your mouth is watering and one of the most popular desserts uh that we eat during Thanksgiving is pie things like pumpkin pie pecan pie apple pie we have tons of

different pies um that's one of my favorite desserts uh that we eat during Thanksgiving and there are many other uh dishes that are associated with Thanksgiving or with Christmas um those are just a handful uh of them and uh some of my favorites and now I want to talk a little bit about what I'm thankful for this year because on Thanksgiving it's good to Express gratitude it's good to say what you're thankful for and to reflect on these blessings that you have in your life so there are many things that I thank God for this

year uh that uh I just really appreciate uh one of the things that comes to mind is uh the end of my wife's immigration process so uh at the very end of last year we finished uh the immigration process for my wife and this year is the year that uh we have established ourselves um in the US me being a citizen and she being a resident so we had been waiting for that process to end for so long uh we constantly thought about the immigration process and it was often stressful to have to um wait

and go through the next step in the process and then wait and then have to uh travel for an interview and do all of these different things and we hated that feeling of not being sure where we were going to live in the future and just being in this process and so when she finally finished the process and we moved up here uh this was a huge relief for us the word relief refers to that feeling that you get when um you were feeling bad and then now that's gone away you feel relief so this

year is our first year uh living in the us legally and we can start to establish ourselves here and I'm extremely thankful that we got through that process and that uh we're now living here um this year has been uh a a really great year being able to be up in the US have my wife here have my son here and that leads me to my next uh thing that I'm really thankful for this year is that I've been able to spend a lot of time with my parents and with my sister and her family

so they all live in the US and so when I lived in Mexico all those years it was hard for me to see them on a regular basis and so now this year has been the first time uh when all of us can get together and uh watch our kids grow up together and do all of that it's a big blessing for me I was really um looking forward to uh being able to do this uh at some point and now this year we can do it so I'm very happy about that I'm very happy

to be with my parents uh as I've mentioned before my mom has very severe health issues and so it's been really great to be with her here and to help out a little bit and uh that's been awesome and of course spending time with my dad and uh seeing my nephew and now my new niece because my sister just gave birth to another kid so I get to be part of my nephew and my niece's life and that's really cool so I'm very thankful for that and I'm very thankful for my own family for my

wife for my son it's been great to watch him grow up more this year it's been great to watch him develop and start to talk and uh do all of those cool things uh that's been a huge blessing uh it's been great to uh be able to do fun things with my wife and my son uh up here in the US so I'm thankful for my own family I'm thankful for my church uh I have a church up here that I really like and uh the members are awesome and uh that's a big part uh

of my life and it's something that I'm very thankful for uh it's something that I can't uh go without uh when you go without something we're saying that you don't have it you uh don't use or have something and just continue without that so I can't go without that I'm really thankful for my church as well uh I'm really thankful for my job so I've been able to reach a lot of people with this content and I've received uh many many messages uh from people thanking me for uh helping them and providing this content that's

been useful for their listening practice and of course my membership which has helped a lot of people start to um understand the sounds of English and understand native speakers better and pronounce things better so I'm very thankful that I've been able to develop uh this uh my career and be able to help a lot of people with this free content and also the content and uh it's really cool to have a job like that where you're helping multiple people um it's great to help one person but it's uh even cooler in my opinion to help

more than one person so I've been really thankful for that that I still have this uh job this activity that I can live on and um that's been a big blessing and and one other thing that I'm really thankful for this year is my audience all of you uh as I already mentioned I receive a lot of messages from you I can't respond to all of them unfortunately because they come at me from different angles some from different social media uh platforms and I'm not the best person at um viewing all my messages and you've

probably seen that by now that I'm not the most connected person on social media or whatever however I want to thank all of you um those of you that send me messages and just all of you for listening uh for helping me do what I do um the fact that I have listeners from all over the world um is really cool it motivates me to continue doing this and uh of course for those of you that uh are members of my membership uh I really appreciate your support and for those of you that have signed

up for my new podcast I really appreciate you as well so I'm thankful for all of you I'm thankful for my audience I wanted to say that here uh because it's important for me to express that especially during this episode about Thanksgiving so thank you all again um and I'm thankful for many more things as well but those were just uh a few that I wanted to mention all right well that's it for today I hope that this episode was interesting for you I hope that if you're in the US or Canada or wherever and

you're celebrating Thanksgiving this week that you have a great Thanksgiving with your family or your friends and uh I hope that you can reflect on some of the things that you're thankful for as well and remember that if you need more help uh if you need my specialized training to understand uh native speakers better or to pronounce uh more correctly then make sure to join my membership and you'll get my specialized training and if you're ready for real conversations if you want to practice with real English between native speakers then make sure to sign up

for my us conversations podcast and you'll get a new conversation every month with the transcript and with the definitions of keywords so the link to that is down below that's patreon.com us conversations and if you like this podcast I'd really appreciate it if you could share it with different people you know who are learning English and please give it a five-star rating and write a review if you can all right thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of listening [Music] time