Why Did FDR Change the Date of Thanksgiving?

Elected U.S. president amid the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt became known for bucking historical norms to expand the powers of the central government and provide a lifeline to struggling Americans. He wasn’t against challenging societal norms, either, as in the case of his seemingly innocuous yet ultimately controversial decision to switch Thanksgiving’s traditional observance date in 1939.

From its colonial roots as a fall harvest festival celebrated in the Northeast, Thanksgiving spread to many of the country’s newly established states in the 19th century. The date was determined by individual governors, which resulted in festivities taking place during any of the autumn months or even as late as March.

In the mid-19th century, writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale began a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. In October 1863, President Abraham Lincoln answered the call and issued a proclamation inviting citizens to “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving.”

President Andrew Johnson reinforced the trend with his own Thanksgiving proclamation in 1865. Although Johnson called the celebration for the first Thursday in December, it soon became commonplace for presidents to follow Lincoln’s precedent by naming the last Thursday of November as the day of observance.

In 1933, newly elected President Roosevelt felt pressure from retail organizations to shift the timing of Thanksgiving. That year, there were five Thursdays in November, so making the holiday one week earlier would allow for more shopping days before Christmas.

FDR gave the matter more consideration when the calendar again produced five November Thursdays and an abbreviated window for Christmas shopping in 1939. Along with pleas from business leaders came a memorandum from Lowell Mellett, executive director of the National Emergency Council, who wrote that retailers were “anticipating one of the worst shopping periods in many years” following an economic downturn in 1937 and 1938.

At the end of a press conference on August 14, 1939, the president announced Thanksgiving would be celebrated one week earlier that November. Many parties had expressed interest in the earlier date, Roosevelt explained, and he would make the change because there was “nothing sacred” about the traditional observance date.

While major retailers rejoiced in the decision, opposition arrived from many directions. One small business owner in Brooklyn, New York, wrote the president to explain that the overcrowded department stores of a shortened shopping season created a customer runoff that trickled into local businesses. A calendar manufacturer complained in his own letter that the change rendered that year’s calendars “obsolete” and marred the millions of 1940 calendars that had already been printed with the incorrect date.

The switch also caused consternation among a loud contingent of college football coaches, who lamented having to shuffle the dates of big games that had been scheduled for what was expected to be a holiday on the final Thursday of the month.

Ultimately, many governors ignored FDR’s judgment and proclaimed their own Thanksgiving dates. That fall, 22 states fell in line behind the president and celebrated “Franksgiving” on November 23. Another 23 celebrated on the final Thursday, November 30, while three states—Texas, Colorado and Mississippi—decided to mark the holiday on both dates.

Despite the chaos, President Roosevelt again proclaimed that Thanksgiving would fall on the penultimate Thursday of November in 1940. More governors came around to the idea, but 16 states again defied the chief executive by earmarking Thanksgiving for the final Thursday of the month.

Initially, results were mixed. A National Retail Dry Goods Association study found that businesses had benefited from the earlier date in 1939, while a civic and business federation outside of New York City announced that the date change had merely “created much unnecessary confusion.” By 1941, mounting evidence showed the earlier date had done more harm than good.

In early May 1941, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia shared the results of a citywide investigation with Roosevelt. According to a survey of store owners, there had been no increase in sales generated by the earlier Thanksgiving date and more owners preferred for a return to the final Thursday of November. Although La Guardia noted he would support the status quo, he wrote that he was “obliged to say that there is a great deal of feeling against the change, much of it sentimental.”

On May 20, 1941, President Roosevelt announced that the expected economic benefits of the earlier Thanksgiving date had not come to fruition, and the holiday would move back to the traditional final Thursday of November in 1942.

Seeing a need to establish a fixed date for Thanksgiving, Congress stepped in and, after some debate, settled on the fourth Thursday of the month. FDR signed the joint resolution into law on December 26, 1941, ending the short-lived experiment to leverage Thanksgiving as a means of boosting Christmas sales.