Why Do We Celebrate Thanksgiving on the Fourth Thursday in November?

As we get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 28, 2024, it might seem like a well-established rule that Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. But did you know that this hasn’t always been the case? In the past, Thanksgiving has been celebrated on different Thursdays in November, and in the early days of our country, it was even celebrated in different months!

The first Thanksgiving national holiday was on Thursday, November 26, 1789. On October 3^rd of that year, President George Washington issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness” (National Archives). In 1795, Washington issued another proclamation, declaring Thursday, February 19, 1795 as the next Thanksgiving holiday (National Archives).

During John Adams’s presidency, Thanksgiving was celebrated on Wednesday, May 9, 1798 (USCB) and Thursday, April 25, 1799 (UCSB). Our next president, Thomas Jefferson, chose not to declare an official day of Thanksgiving, recognizing that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prevented him from mandating a day of prayer (Monticello).

Over the following decades and administrations, Thanksgiving was sporadically recognized on different dates (National Archives). On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November was to be recognized as a Day of Thanksgiving (Obama White House). In 1870, Congress passed legislation making Thanksgiving a holiday, but gave the president discretion to declare the date that the holiday would be celebrated. Most presidents continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November (National Archives).

In 1933, during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first year in office, there were five Thursdays in November, making the traditional Thanksgiving date fall on November 30^th. Because Thanksgiving fell late that year, businesses were concerned that the Christmas shopping season would be cut short. Store owners had already been seeing poor sales due to the Great Depression, so they lobbied FDR to move Thanksgiving up a week. FDR was not swayed that year, but in 1939, there were once again five Thursday in November. On October 31^st of that year, FDR acquiesced to business owners’ lobbying and declared that Thanksgiving would fall on the fourth Thursday of the month, November 23^rd. There were plenty of critics of this decision, and because calendars had already been printed for the year and football games and school closings had already been scheduled, many Americans chose to celebrate Thanksgiving one week later, and even dubbed FDR’s holiday “Franksgiving” (Washington Post and FDR Presidential Library).

In 1940 and 1941, FDR celebrated Thanksgiving on the second to last Thursdays in November, while some opponents continued to celebrate it on the last Thursday. To end this confusion and to unify the country as the United States entered World War II, the House and Senate passed a resolution establishing Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November. FDR signed the resolution on December 26, 1941 (National Archives). Today, we continue celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November.