Thanksgiving Day – Hálaadás napja
On September 16th, 1620, the ship the Mayflower left Plymouth Harbour in England with 110 passengers. The passengers called themselves the ‘Pilgrims’. The Mayflower arrived in America 65 days later, on November 10th 1620.
The winter of 1620 was very cold and the snow made it difficult for the Pilgrims to build houses. In the spring of 1621 there were less than 50 Pilgrims left alive.
On March 16th, 1621, a native American (Indian) from the Patuxet tribe visited the Pilgrims. His name was Samoset. Soon afterwards, he visited them again with a friend called Squanto, who spoke English well.
Squanto taught the settlers how to plant Indian corn, how to get syrup from the maple trees and how to tell the difference between poisonous and edible plants.
In October the Pilgrims had a lot of food from the fields after the harvest. They invited Squanto and the other Indians to join them for a thanksgiving celebration.
For the next 200 years, thanksgiving was celebrated after the harvest. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln said there would be a national day of thanksgiving. Since then Americans have officially celebrated Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday in November. People all over the USA get together with their families to enjoy roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.
Vocabulary:
Pilgrims – zarándokok
tribe – törzs
maple tree – juharfa
poisonous – mérgező
edible – ehető
harvest – betakarítás
