Why on Thursday?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

In the column Is it true Thanksgiving was invented by the editor of Harper’s Bazaar?. Cecil never answered the big question: Why on Thursday?.

If Thanksgiving was on a Friday, we’d get a three day weekend, and that’s it. Now you have two types of responses at work:

[ol]
[li]Five day Holiday!: At some places, you get Thanksgiving off, but then most people take Friday anyway. Now, since you have four whole days, you think about flying half way across the country. You don’t want to do this on Thursday because (another big unanswered question) you eat Thanksgiving dinner not at 6pm or so, but 3pm.[/li]
That means you now want to fly on Wednesday, so you can be on time for your Thanksgiving dinner. Now, you have five days off. (And, even if you’re not flying on Wednesday, are you going to come in on Wednesday anyway? Yeah right.)

[li]Lousy one day holiday in the middle of the week which makes it impossible to get anything done: This is for you hourly employees. You get one day off, and that’s Thursday. You are suppose to come in on Friday and attempt to get something done which is impossible since all of the big shots who have the information you need for that report you’re suppose to do today have taken both Wednesday and Friday off. [/li]
You watch the clock on Friday slowly tick along as you seethe in the bitter bowl of bile that has become your life. You hate your life. You hate your job. You hate all the bigwigs that took Wednesday and Friday off, but insisted that you couldn’t because they’re work days. And, you now realize that all the dreams you had when you first started college will never ever become true.
[/ol]

Oh, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

2

I don’t know why it should be Thursday, but I can point out that the 1786 draft of the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer calls for the first Thursday in November, and the 1789 first edition qualifies that by adding “or on ſuch other day as ſhall be appointed by the Civil Authority”. Those provisions remained in the Prayer Book until 1979, where it just says “Thanksgiving Day”.

3

Back in ancient times, I believe, Thursday was a “market day” when the rural folks all came into the city. Synagogues for sure had special services on Thursdays. For Christianity (at least, for Catholics), the Thursday before Easter is a holiday (recognizing the Last Supper)* and the Thursday forty days after Easter is when Jesus rose to heaven. Thus, there’s some connection for Thursday and being thankful, n’est-ce pas?

  • Called “Monday Thursday” by the late, great Walt Kelly.