In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt ( FDR) came up with the idea at the encouragement of retailers to move up Thanksgiving a week. This was done to encourage people to start buying a week early for Christmas.
Before that time, Thanksgiving had been always on the last Thursday of the month of November. Since the Civil War.
The change was done late in the year.
The decision by FDR resulted in a mess.
The turkey growers protested.( Not enough time to get turkeys fat)
Colleges protested saying they had already printed catalogs of the calendar of school holidays.
Football games had to be rescheduled. ( Some of us are old enough to remember when the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas played the Univ. of Texas every Thanksgiving)
It caused such a mess that several states made two Thanksgiving holidays......Including Texas.
Other states kept the old traditional holiday of the last Thursday...Others made it the new one.
It remained that way until in 1941 Congress passed a resolution which was signed by FDR making the 4th Thursday of every November Thanksgiving....
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