English Through Reading for efl learners

English Through Reading for EFL Learners
 
INSTRUCTOR: DR. H. GHAEMI 9 
needs during the long cold winter months. The year 1621 was a particularly bountiful one for the 
Plymouth colonists, so they "gave thanks" for their good fortunes.
3. 
In the years that followed, other colonies introduced their own Thanksgiving festivals, each one 
at first choosing its own date, and many varying the date according to the state of the harvests. In 
1789, President George Washington gave an official Thanksgiving Day address in honor of the new 
Constitution; and Thanksgiving Day, like Independence Day (July 4th) became one of America's 
great days. Nevertheless, at first the date was not fixed nationally; indeed, it was not until 1863 
that President Abraham Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving Day should be celebrated on the last 
Thursday of November. Other presidents made similar proclamations, and the date of 
Thanksgiving tended to move around until the year 1941, when Congress and the President jointly 
declared that it should henceforth be fixed on the fourth Thursday of November. Since then, 
Thanksgiving Day has remained fixed.
4. Once a communal festival, where whole communities celebrated together, Thanksgiving is today 
the great family festival; but apart from that, it has not changed greatly. 
The heart of Thanksgiving is still the fruit of the land; and the Thanksgiving feast is based, 
essentially, on the native American foods that allowed the early settlers to survive: turkey, corn, 
potatoes and squash. The wild turkeys, large birds that lived in the forests of North America, 
were like a miracle for the early colonists who could trap them with ease; and turkey has always 
been the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast. Potatoes were unknown to Europeans before the 
discovery of North America, and it was Indians who taught the early colonists how to grow them 
and eat them. Maize, the great native North American cereal, is another ingredient of the 
Thanksgiving meal, eaten in the form of sweet corn. Finally, for dessert, no Thanksgiving meal is 
complete without "pumpkin pie", the traditional tart made from pumpkins, enormous round 
orange types of squash.