Tweet
The year we Had Two Thanksgivings
11/22/2006: In what year did we have two Thanksgivings?
BY CHRISTOPHER BENNETT
Journal Times
Q: In what year did we have two Thanksgivings?
A: It was 1939. Blame the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s desire to spur the economy.
Let’s back up for a second.
Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, and decided we should always celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November.
Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday, though, at the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency in 1932. It fell to the president to issue an annual Thanksgiving proclamation decreeing when to carve the meat. Most assumed — and, until 1939, did so correctly — that the president would always set Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November.
In 1933, Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of the year — Nov. 30 — and retailers threw a fit.
Even then, no one really started shopping for Christmas presents until after Thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving came earlier in November, merchants theorized, there would be more shopping days available before Christmas.
Merchant’s organizations pleaded with Roosevelt in 1933 to move Thanksgiving one week earlier. He refused.
But he didn’t refuse in 1939, and FDR moved Thanksgiving from Nov. 30 to Nov. 23.
And that caused problems.
Some retailers loved the change and others complained they’d about losing business. Calendar makers nationwide were now wrong and school schedules nationwide were now open to question.
So some states told FDR to stick it.
Some governors declared Nov. 30 Thanksgiving, as it should have been. This only complicated the matter — Wisconsin might celebrate Thanksgiving on Nov. 30 and Illinois might celebrate on Nov. 23. What do families with relatives in both states do?
FDR bucked tradition and observed Thanksgiving on the second to last Thursday in November for two more years. The amount of public outrage prompted Congress to pass a law on Dec. 26, 1941, decreeing we’d all celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November … every year.
The home page of FDR’s Presidential Library deals with this very issue. Learn more at http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/thanksg.html
BY CHRISTOPHER BENNETT
Journal Times
Q: In what year did we have two Thanksgivings?
A: It was 1939. Blame the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s desire to spur the economy.
Let’s back up for a second.
Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, and decided we should always celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November.
Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday, though, at the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency in 1932. It fell to the president to issue an annual Thanksgiving proclamation decreeing when to carve the meat. Most assumed — and, until 1939, did so correctly — that the president would always set Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November.
In 1933, Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of the year — Nov. 30 — and retailers threw a fit.
Even then, no one really started shopping for Christmas presents until after Thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving came earlier in November, merchants theorized, there would be more shopping days available before Christmas.
Merchant’s organizations pleaded with Roosevelt in 1933 to move Thanksgiving one week earlier. He refused.
But he didn’t refuse in 1939, and FDR moved Thanksgiving from Nov. 30 to Nov. 23.
And that caused problems.
Some retailers loved the change and others complained they’d about losing business. Calendar makers nationwide were now wrong and school schedules nationwide were now open to question.
So some states told FDR to stick it.
Some governors declared Nov. 30 Thanksgiving, as it should have been. This only complicated the matter — Wisconsin might celebrate Thanksgiving on Nov. 30 and Illinois might celebrate on Nov. 23. What do families with relatives in both states do?
FDR bucked tradition and observed Thanksgiving on the second to last Thursday in November for two more years. The amount of public outrage prompted Congress to pass a law on Dec. 26, 1941, decreeing we’d all celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November … every year.
The home page of FDR’s Presidential Library deals with this very issue. Learn more at http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/thanksg.html
Comment