This thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a holiday on which people get together with family and friends for a big meal and give thanks for all the good things in their lives.

Lots of cultures have a similar holiday. The generally accepted story behind ours is that a small group of Europeans known as the pilgrims came to North America in 1621 and almost starved during their first winter. They were helped by the local Indian population. So, when the harvest was good the following year, they had a big feast with the Indians to celebrate both the good harvest and their survival of the previous winter.

In October, we taped a lesson on Thanksgiving, but when I went to edit it and put it on English, baby!, I discovered it probably wouldn’t make for a very good lesson. We taped it near the end of the day and we gotten really silly by then. When Devan asked Beren to explain the story of Thanksgiving, she told a whole bunch of lies!

Take a listen to the audio if you want to hear something funny. Everyone burst out laughing after the recorder had stopped. Beren says that the pilgrims arrived in 1892 and were asked to pardon a turkey by the local Indians, which is why the president pardons a turkey every year. Then the pilgrims died, so the holiday is to remember the pilgrims. Pretty funny stuff, but too confusing for an ESL lesson. If you want to know more about the real Thanksgiving story, click here.

Anyway, I thought Beren’s  improv skills were pretty good there. I’m not sure if I could come up with an alternate Thanksgiving story on the spot like that!

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Tags: english lesson, esl, indian, lies, pardon turkey, pilgrims, thanksgiving

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