Just for clarity--our church has regular prayers of thanksgiving during worship services, usually at least a couple of times a month. We are Presbyterians.

I think the 'thanks' part of the day isn't so much "a pious day..." as a time set aside to highlight those things that we have instead of complaining (as many are wont to do) about what we don't have. Among people I know, that seems to be the general idea, anyway.

And happy turkey to you, too. ;-)

Posted by Cat. at November 22, 2007 01:13 PM

If you look it up in a bilingual dictionary it will give something that translates back to "day of giving thanks," but that doesn't really work, …

It works as much as other feasts in what used to be called Christendom, I think; Christmas and New Years and the Epiphany are distinctly different affairs in the various places where they have the same etymological name. Posted by Aidan Kehoe at November 22, 2007 04:49 PM

Not the same. Sure, Christmas is celebrated differently, but it is the same holiday, and I don't see that Christmas = Navidad is any different than city = ciudad (cities are different in different countries too).

Posted by language hat at November 22, 2007 05:20 PM

Yeah, "Thanksgiving" is a weird name. If it was British, it would be called "The November Bank Holiday".

Posted by mollymooly at November 22, 2007 06:44 PM

Côtes du Rhône! There is a French word cote, which is pronounced differently and means lots of different things.

Posted by David Marjanović at November 22, 2007 07:34 PM

And there is Art Buchwald's immortal "Jour du Merci Donnant" in which he explains Thanskgiving to French readers of the International Herald Tribune.
Enjoy it at :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112201825.html

and Happy Thanksgiving from London

Posted by Paul at November 23, 2007 04:37 AM

Côtes du Rhône!

D'oh! Thanks, it's fixed now. (I lazily copied it from a wine site and was too distracted by holiday activities to notice it looked wrong.)

Posted by language hat at November 23, 2007 07:17 AM

In Quebec it's Action de Grâce … but it's really just another chance for the Quebecoise to leave traffic-delaying highway reconstruction work unattended

Posted by mahendra singh at November 23, 2007 01:55 PM

The blog of Oxford University Press USA also has a story about "the real first Thanksgiving": http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/thanksgiving/.
Apparently, "[t]he first time that anyone associated thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims was in 1841".
And "[t]he driving force behind making Thanksgiving a national holiday was a New Englander named Sarah Josepha Hale."

Posted by Christophe Strobbe at November 23, 2007 04:19 PM

I think your turkey was probably spatchcocked, rather than butterflied, which is a term used for shrimp.

Posted by Sour Grapes at November 24, 2007 06:59 PM

but it's really just another chance for the Quebecoise to leave traffic-delaying highway reconstruction work unattended

Hah. Austrians don't an excuse for that.

Posted by David Marjanović at November 25, 2007 05:24 PM

"I think your turkey was probably spatchcocked, rather than butterflied, which is a term used for shrimp."

'Butterflied' is also used for a leg of lamb, so it would fit for a turkey as well.

Posted by Jim at November 27, 2007 02:00 PM

That's what the butcher called it, and I assume he knows.

Posted by language hat at November 27, 2007 04:06 PM