Susan Muto's Catholic family was gathered for Thanksgiving, where family tradition called for a child preparing for First Communion to offer grace.

Her young nephew was so nervous about reciting the short prayer and so awed by his mother's many hours of meal preparation that he blurted out, "God is grace, God is good. Thank her for the food."

"We spent the first four minutes of our meal howling. We congratulated him. We called him a new theologian and said, 'Anthony, you've brought back the motherhood of God,'" said Dr. Muto, a theologian and executive director of the Epiphany Association in Banksville, which helps laity learn Christian spiritual practices.

The glee with which the family still recalls that grace from 20 years ago is a reminder of how important giving thanks can be for families, she said.

"It's a very human experience to be thankful that we are together and we have something to eat," she said.

"It may take all of 30 seconds, but it feels so much better when you do it. You don't just sit and wolf your food down like ravenous animals. You have a pause that reminds you that there is something sacred about it."

The prayer before meals is called "grace" because it comes from the same root as "gratitude," she said. Because Thanksgiving commemorates an act of thanking God, it may be the only occasion when some families pause to do so.

Perhaps the most common form in the U.S. is taught to Catholic children: "Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Boredom with those words led Adrian Butash to write "Bless This Food: Ancient and Contemporary Graces from Around the World." The 2007 edition includes blessings from all major and many minor faith traditions, as well as nonreligious offerings, in poem, prayer, song and sign language.

Mr. Butash, 68, of Santa Barbara, Calif., is a marketing professional with a philosophy degree whose favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. He wanted to make it a joy for his children and grandchildren to offer grace.

"The food prayer is the one prayer that the family engages in as the family," he said. "It's a learning experience for the children. They sit at the table and understand that there is something called God, the Almighty, a higher being. And the essential family dynamic is that you are inviting God to the table so God is present with you."

Gratitude for food predates known faiths, he said. He likes to reflect on the 30,000-year-old paintings of animals in the Lascaux caves of France.

"Anthropologists discuss the date or how they got the pigment, but that misses the point. I assert that these paintings are an act of thanksgiving for food. If you were living in a cave 30,000 years ago and were starving one day, you'd be very thankful to have a chunk of food to chew on the next. It's painted in thanksgiving to whatever they considered their Almighty, which may well have been the food itself," he said.

The graces in his book range from the familiar and traditional to the obscure and exotic.

A Hindu prayer of blessing begins, "As thou hast set the moon in the sky to be the poor man's lantern, so let thy light shine in my dark life and lighten my path."

One of the more popular prayers was authored by the Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch, a 19th-century preacher of the social gospel: "A circle of friends is a blessed thing/ Sweet is the breaking of bread with friends./ For the honor of their presence at our board/ we are deeply grateful, Lord./ Thanks be to thee for friendship shared/ thanks be to thee for food prepared./ Bless thou the cup, bless thou the bread./ Thy blessing rest upon each head."

One of Mr. Butash's favorites is from Tecumseh, an 18th-century Shawnee chief, who declared: "When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself."

Each year Mr. Butash gives his book to a guest -- often a child -- an hour or so before the meal and asks them to choose a blessing and offer it over the food. It makes easy for people who likely would be tongue-tied or offended if they were asked to give thanks on the spot.

"Suddenly, the children, instead of being tucked into the corner, can be at the head of the table and leading the family," he said. "For a guest, it's a way of offering them a privilege."

In Judaism, the prayer at a Thanksgiving meal is the same one prescribed for any meal that includes bread: "Blessed are you, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who brings forth bread from the ground."

The prayer is offered over rolls, said Rabbi Yaacov Rosenstein, director of Torah One on One, a religious tutoring service. Stuffing doesn't count.

"Once it has been soaked in water it has lost its form, so that would reduce it to the blessing made on cake or noodles or oatmeal," he said.

Exhausted cooks may be glad to hear that the Kabbalah teaches that rolls sprang whole from the ground in the Garden of Eden and may do so again.

"It's part of the curse of man that we have to go through 11 processes to make bread. We're told that in the messianic era, he will once again bring forth rolls from the ground, hot perhaps," Rabbi Rosenstein said.

In Buddhism, giving thanks for food is linked to the life of renunciation followed by monks who beg for their food, said the Rev. Kyoki Roberts, head priest of the Deep Spring Temple at the Zen Buddhist Center of Pittsburgh, in Sewickley.

They imitate the Buddha, who wandered and begged, offering prayers and teaching. When she received her training in Japan, she begged five days a month, carrying a bowl and a bell, and chanting prayers in front of each house they passed.

"We called on She Who Hears the Cries of the World, asking for compassion for the people in the house. We would say that three times and then go on to the next house. Sometimes the people would come out and put money in the bowl or bring some rice or vegetables or fruit," she said.

Many people say they want to pray more, but can't find time. In response, Barbara Bartocci, a freelance writer from Overland Park, Kan., wrote a series of "Grace on the Go" books, offering short prayers to accompany everyday tasks. They're not primarily table graces, but "Grace on the Go: Prayers for Determined Dieters" has helpful prayers for holiday meals.

She suggests taping this one to the fridge: "Today I fill my body with God's good food and commit to right eating throughout the day. I will praise God in the food I eat, the thoughts I think, the actions I take, in the name of the creator, the redeemer and the sanctifier. Amen."

She's writing "Grace on the Go: Prayers for Money Worries." Giving thanks in hard times is a matter of focusing on what you have, rather than on what you don't have, she said.

None of her books has a Thanksgiving grace, so she wrote one for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Thank you God for our bountiful table. We eat with reverence the food before us and ask your grace to help us eat wisely, to nurture our bodies as you nurture our souls. We do not forget all those who are hungry, and ask your blessing: may their hunger be eased. Amen."