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Why Is Thanksgiving on a Thursday? The Surprisingly Messy History of Turkey Day's Date

It wasn't always the fourth Thursday. For a while, nobody could agree which one.

By the Buzzuh Team

The short answer

Thanksgiving is on a Thursday because of tradition that goes back to colonial New England, where special days of thanks were often held midweek, and because President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 proclamation set it on the last Thursday of November. In 1941, Congress made it official: Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November.

Blame the colonists (sort of)

In colonial New England, "days of thanksgiving" weren't one big annual party. Local leaders declared them whenever something good happened, like a strong harvest or the end of a drought, and they were usually spent in church rather than in elastic-waist pants.

Historians think those days often landed midweek partly because Sunday was already reserved for church and Saturday was for getting ready for Sunday. Many New England towns also held regular Thursday church lectures, and in some colonies Thursday was market day too, so Thursday was already a day people were used to gathering. Nobody wrote down one official reason, but Thursday kept winning.

Then the presidents picked Thursdays too

When George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation under the Constitution, he chose Thursday, November 26, 1789. After that, though, a national Thanksgiving was a now-and-then thing, and each state mostly set its own date.

That changed in 1863. Pushed by years of letters from magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, President Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. Presidents kept issuing a proclamation for the last Thursday every year after that.

The year Thanksgiving moved (and people were not having it)

In 1939, November had five Thursdays, which meant Thanksgiving would land on November 30 and leave a very short Christmas shopping season. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it up a week to help stores during the Great Depression.

That caused a lot of confusion. Calendars were already printed, football games were already scheduled, and roughly half the states kept the old date anyway. For three Thanksgivings in a row (1939 through 1941), Americans couldn't agree on which Thursday was Thanksgiving, and some families got to argue about it on both of them.

How the fourth Thursday became the law

In late 1941, Congress settled it by passing a law that made Thanksgiving a federal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November, starting in 1942. Most years the last Thursday and the fourth Thursday are the same day anyway, so the change mostly mattered in years with five Thursdays.

And a Thursday holiday came with a bonus nobody planned on: a four-day weekend for lots of people, which is how Friday became the official day of leftovers, naps and shopping.

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