Friday 20 February 2009

Word of the Day - Feierabend

Sometimes we human beings are just too clever by half, making puns and allusions when writing titles and dreaming up new terms. In preparation for this year's Kirchentag in Bremen we are trying to create a new booklet in English for many of the international visitors. On Friday evening the Kirchentag has a Feierabendmahl - Special Holy Communion or Lord's Supper. But how do you translate that? For the past decade or so we've been using "celebratory communion" to get across the idea that theses services don't always follow traditional liturgies - and feiern in German also means celebrate, have fun, party so it does get that aspect across well.
But holding these celebratory communion services on a Friday evening and calling them Feierabendmahl also has another layer of meaning. Feierabend means the end of the working day, knocking-off time, closing time ... I suppose if I were trying to get that across I might call the service "Thank God it's Friday"! A TGIF eucharist WWJS to that I wonder?

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Wow! It's going to be FOUR years since I attended the Kirchentag in Hannover. Oh my! Time goes so fast!!!!

Anonymous said...

And what about a "Feierabendheim" - not to be confused with a "Feierabendhaus" of course - which I once saw translated as a home for spare time activities :-)