“We’re talking about a wonderful day when no one diets. Why else would they call it Thanksgiving?”

American humorist Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) wrote in a Thanksgiving newspaper column in November 1981:
 
“Sometimes I feel the real meaning of Thanksgiving is lost in a flurry of turkey, prayers and homecomings. What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?”
 
Bombeck’s Thanksgiving quote has been included in many Thanksgiving quotation collections.
 
 
Wikipedia: Erma Bombeck
Erma Louise Bombeck (née Fiste; February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers. From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife. By the 1970s, her columns were read twice-weekly by 30 million readers of the 900 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.
 
18 November 1981, Chillicothe (MO) Constitution-Tribune, “At Wit’s End: Thanksgiving’s true meaning” by Erma Bombeck, pg 5 ,col. 1:
Sometimes I feel the real meaning of Thanksgiving is lost in a flurry of turkey, prayers and homecomings.
 
What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
     
Google Books
Quotations for All Occasions
By Catherine Frank
New York, NY: Columbia University Press
2000
Pg. 47:
What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
ERMA BoMBECK (1927–1996), U.S. humorist and newspaper columnist. “No One Diets on Thanksgiving” (26 November 1981), in Forever, Erma: America’s Best-Loved Writing from America’s Best-Loved Humorist (1996).
 
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Fall Quotes
scrapcrap
10/6/04
(...)
What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
~Erma Bombeck, “No One Diets on Thanksgiving,” 26 November 1981
 
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Thanksgiving Quote of the Day
needles
11/21/06
“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving ?”
 
*Erma Bombeck*  1927 - 1996
       
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“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day … when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” ~ Erma Bombeck
12:46 PM - 28 Nov 2013