英语学习：Thanksgiving day 感恩节的来由

　　The European Origins of Thanksgiving

　　许多人认为感恩节是北美的节日，但在更早之前的西欧社会，人们就已经举办丰收庆典，感谢富饶大自然给予的恩赐。当欧洲人移民到新大陆后，也带来了这一传统习俗。

　　Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving.

　　While people think of Thanksgiving as a North American holiday, one that goes back to the time of the earlier European settlers in North America. The fact is that Thanksgiving's roots actually go back much further. Thanksgiving's roots go actually across the Atlantic back into Europe which is where a lot of the harvest celebrations originated at least in terms of European Western society. You can find a lot of these harvest celebrations actually worldwide.

　　But, particularly around in Europe and just where you had like the cycles. And Europe definitely oscillatesbetween warm and cold. There are very strong definite seasons and you have the harvest period when you brought in all the crops that you had planted throughout the season, toiledover and you are getting ready to ride out the winter and then you have the harvest. Often times people would celebrate by having a feast during this time.

　　And, places like Northern France and England were no exception to this. And, many of these groups would get together and there would be, I mean these feasts would last over a period of days not just one meal. And as we start actually entering into a period of European migration to the new world a lot of these folks brought their customs with them."

　　The Origin of Thanksgiving Day Parades

　　化妆游行是感恩节一大习俗，最初是来自世界各地的移民们希望参与和庆祝节日、新家的一种方式。街上挂着各种大横幅，人们穿着各种服饰聚集在一起唱歌跳舞、表演艺术手艺等。

　　Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving.

　　Something else we associate with Thanksgiving are parades. You know, watching the big floats on TV, on the wires and all the people and bands performing. Watching all like the bigger than life displays, all that going through major cities in America. This actually had it's start back in the 1920's. It was at that time that Thanksgiving was going on and there were a lot of new immigrants to the country and the immigrants also wanted to kind of partakeand celebrate.

　　Many of them wanted to celebrate their new home, but also like bring over some traditions from the old world or other parts of the world they were from and some of these other parts of the world celebrated in the form of parades. People getting together and marching, dressing up, doing all sorts of things, so people would do this, they started organizing Thanksgiving Day parades where they would dress up in costumes, clowns, in uniform, there would be even dancing and other, like arts and crafts going all throughout, parading right through the city. And some of these bigger parades then started adding some floats. You started getting some radio and television coverage, more sponsorship, and it exploded, nowadays to where you have enormous parades on Thanksgiving Day which people across the entire country watch."

　　Thanksgiving History of Pardoning the National Turkey

　　每年一度的总统放生火鸡仪式始于1947年杜鲁门总统当政时期。被选中的火鸡可以在农场里自然地生老病死，随心所欲地享受它的生活，没选中的只能成为白宫美味的晚餐了。

　　Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving.

　　Since Thanksgiving became a national holiday, there have been a number of traditions and associated events around it which have kind of popped up, cropped up over the years and decades. One of these is the pardoning of the national turkey.

　　Now some things are known about this, other things are not. Often times of course we see on television the president pardoning the turkey. This turkey has been allowed to live out a natural life until it's natural demiseon the farm, where it's happy and gets it's fill of eating and doing whatever basically it wants. It lives, it has a very very good life.

　　But what you don't know is that that is not the only turkey in the process. Generally there are three turkeys. This began in the 1940's to which these three turkeys are presented to the president and the president picks one for pardoning. What happens to the other two? The other two are prepared for the White House Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, that is right. The other two turkeys do not make it. They are found wanting but for definitely, good eating."