Happy Thanksgiving

Did you know that Thanksgiving was celebrated twice in 1939? Farmers Ins. agent Steve Rogers brought this fact to my attention recently and I thought you might like to know about that double Thanksgiving controversy.

Since 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday, the celebration has always been observed on the last Thursday of November. However in 1933 there were five Thursdays in November and business leaders lobbied President Roosevelt to move the holiday to the 23rd instead of the 30th, believing that the extra shopping week between Thanksgiving and Christmas would help businesses weather the Depression. Their request was ignored, but when the same situation occurred in 1939 Roosevelt did in fact declare the 23rd to be Thanksgiving.

The opposition was overwhelming. Calendar manufactures had already printed their products years in advance. Schools had already scheduled traditional Thanksgiving Day football games as well as planning for students and teachers to be off for the holiday. Many folks were not happy, how dare the President change a tradition to accommodate business.

Some governors declared the 30th to be Thanksgiving and thus depending upon which state one lived in the celebration was either on the 23rd or the 30th. Finally in 1941 Congress put an end to the controversy by making it the law of the land that Thanksgiving is to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.

You can read more about this controversy at the FDR library and museum website: http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/thanksg.html. Thank You Steve for sharing this bit of history with me and my readers.