The Recession is Over?

According to the most recent episode of the television show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the seemingly endless recession that has been troubling people of the United States and abroad, ended June 2009.
The Recession Is Over
www.thedailyshow.com
To be honest, I would say that I trust the theories of the economists who have been researching and documenting the history of this dreaded recession, especially since they have only as of late  discovered that the recession had presumably ended approximately a year and three months ago.. In spite of this, I remain somewhat skeptical of this somewhat random and startling conclusion that these economists have drawn recently. What I interpret that the economists meant by "July 2009 was the end of the recession" is that in July 2009, the economy of the U.S. stopped contracting at a dangerous rate. However, I believe, and I suspect countless other American citizens, that the official end of a recession does not merely come when the economy stops contracting, but that it comes when the economy returns to a more normal, stable state. Overall, in my opinion, I see that this conclusion is surprising and startling for many Americans because of a simple confusion of definition.