Most Americans grew up thinking Thanksgiving had always fallen on the same Thursday in November. In Lincoln’s time, it was set on the last Thursday of November, and that practice settled in for generations. Then Franklin D. Roosevelt shifted the holiday earlier, hoping a longer shopping season would lift the struggling Depression-era economy. The change split the country, with some governors following FDR and others keeping the old date. For a few years, families marked Thanksgiving on different Thursdays depending on where they lived.
Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of Lady Editor, shares the story of how FDR and Thanksgiving became embroiled in a fight that saw college football teams and calendar makers alike joining sides, and how Congress finally stepped in to affix the holiday to the fourth Thursday of November forevermore.