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This Thanksgiving, more than ever, I am deeply grateful for the large, strong, loving heart of the average American. That heart beats within those who love this country enough to die for it. It is also a tolerant, forgiving, and gracious heart. But there are limits to how far it can be assaulted. It has a voice and we are beginning to hear it speak. At first it was a murmur, then a rumble, then— as the tea parties assembled and the buses and trains and automobiles began to roll toward the hundreds of town halls and open parks and street corners— it became a shout. As we pause, heads bowed, to give thanks for all we have and all we are, let’s remember to enjoy it, for it may be the last quiet moment we will have for some time. —“Symposium–Counting Our Blessings: Things to be thankful for,” Lucianne Goldberg (et al.), National Review Online

In the end, it seems that only the English dispensed completely with both the American and the Indian origins of the huexoloti. English importers dealt with the same Turkish merchants who exported the huexoloti to Russia, to Iran, to Poland, to The Netherlands, to Sweden, and even to India. But the English, being English, did not need all of the pedigree words that came along with the bird. They could not be bothered with all of that linguistic falderal. The birds came from Turkish merchants—“135 of the creatures bought at 4 shillings a piece” in 1555—and, to describe what they were in his ledger, the English importer created a new English word—“Turkies” (OED). And, once again, the elastic vacuum cleaner that is the English language got a new word and the huexoloti got a new and permanent name—at least for the English speaking world. —“Our Turkish-American Thanksgiving Bird,” Larry E. Tise, History News Network

It is worth noting that Thanksgiving Day, first celebrated in the autumn of 1621, derives from the Jewish harvest festival of Tabernacles (or Booths), the annual eight-day ceremonial anticipation of the great Messianic ingathering of all nations to occur at the end of time. The Puritans’ self-identification as Israel Reconstituted gave rise to the notion, now long-embedded in our national psyche, that America is the darling of divine Providence, a (the?) chosen nation whose every aspiration is underwritten by the Almighty. Wrong. The Church, not America, is the New Israel, the fulfillment of the promise that Israel would be “a light to the nations” (Isa. 49:6), the center to which all nations are destined to converge in order to see the glory of God. While I love my country, I do not hesitate to add that America is one nation among many, no less loved by God, but no more. Texts facilitating a misunderstanding of the one People of God (for which there is no plural) do not belong in our liturgical books. —“Thanksgiving Day Mass? No, thanks,” Fr. Thomas Kocik, The New Liturgical Movement (as excerpted from the June 2004 Homiletic and Pastoral Review)