Happy Franksgiving

The annual tradition of Thanksgiving began with Abraham Lincoln, but its specific date is due to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

For decades after Lincoln, presidents followed his example of declaring the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving. But in 1939, the calendar worked out so that the fifth and final Thursday of the month was November 30th.

Now, this was a long-ago time when — believe it or not — businesses actually believed it was in poor taste to put up Christmas decorations and start its shopping season in earnest until after Thanksgiving. There was some grumbling from corporate corners about the late start that year. Responding to their pressure in late August 1939, Roosevelt declared that the fourth Thursday of the month, November 23rd, would be Thanksgiving instead.

Chaos ensued. Businesses loved the extra week of retail shopping they’d get now, but organizations that had already scheduled annual events for the anticipated date of the 30th — parades, football games, etc. — were furious.

Republicans, of course, insisted that Roosevelt was acting like a dictator. Alf Landon, who had been beaten in a landslide in the 1936 presidential election, accused FDR of operating “with the omnipotence of a Hitler.” A Republican senator from New Hampshire urged the president to "abolish winter” with his next decree.

In the most memorable jab, the Republican mayor of Atlantic City mocked the president by calling the new date “Franksgiving.”

Several states led by Republicans refused to go along with what they mocked as “Franksgiving,” which meant that there were actually two rival holidays that year, with about half the states switching to the new date of November 23, the other half stubbornly sticking to November 30, and three states bizarrely going with both.

The rivalry carried on into 1940, as more states adapted to the new date, and was finally settled in 1941 when Congress declared that FDR’s new arrangement — holding the holiday on the fourth Thursday in November — would be the law from that point on.

But right before the date was settled, the confusion was etched into American pop culture in the 1942 Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire film Holiday Inn. While most of us know it as the movie that introduced the song “White Christmas,” it also contains a joke about the rival Thanksgivings:

So if you’re having Thanksgiving this year at a table divided by politics, you can be thankful that — at the very least — you can agree on the date.