When Thanksgiving day was rescheduled to maximize shopping time
FDR’s well-intentioned move did not go over well
Have you ever thought that whoever decided to time Thanksgiving just weeks after presidential elections was an American sadist? Welp, it was Abraham Lincoln who made that call. And Franklin Roosevelt actually tried to make the annual family meal/debate even closer.
George Washington originally proclaimed a day of thanks on November 26, 1789. After that, Congress and various state representatives occasionally nominated similar holidays, but not with any regularity. Then on October 3, 1863, Lincoln finally established the last Thursday in November as a recurring holiday.
But in 1939, the fourth Thursday was set to fall late, on November 30. FDR worried that was too close to Christmas, and wouldn’t give people enough time to, ahem, stimulate the economy. Tasked with digging the nation out of the Great Depression, he was anxious about the impact on spending. A shorter window for Christmas shopping was not ideal.
The retail industry pressured the president to bump Thanksgiving up to the third Thursday in November. He did, and people got pissed. Americans protested and dubbed the bogus new holiday “Franksgiving.” In an August poll that year, the American Institute of Public Opinion found that 62% of voters opposed the change.
FDR got a little sassy, likely because he had bigger things to worry about, and delivered this address: “That the day of Thanksgiving was not a national holiday and that there was nothing sacred about the date, as it was only since the Civil War that the last Thursday of November was chosen for observance,” reported the Associated Press in 1939.
Washington boiled over. Senator Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) carped that Roosevelt might just reconfigure the entire calendar, rather than one single day: “I wish Mr. Roosevelt would abolish Winter. Millions of people can’t enjoy their vacations for thinking that in a few months they will again be paying tribute to the fuel barons.”
One college football coach in Arkansas threatened, “We’ll vote the Republican ticket if [President Roosevelt] interferes with our football.”
Some governors pledged to observe the original holiday in their own states, calling the fourth Thursday “Republican Thanksgiving” and the third Thursday “Democratic Thanksgiving.” That year, 23 states protested by celebrating the holiday on its original date. The following year, 16 states did.
On Thanksgiving 1941, FDR joked about the outrage: “Two years ago, or three years ago, I discovered I was particularly fond of turkey! So we started two Thanksgivings. I don’t know how many we ought to have next year. I’m open to suggestion.”
Congress wasn’t. In December they extinguished the controversy once and for all by passing a law that returned Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of the month and established the day as a federal holiday.
Ah, to return to such simple arguments. We won’t be so lucky this year. The election made sure of that.
