Don’t mess with Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, the most inclusive and all-American of holidays, has sharply divided our nation this year. How to celebrate during the pandemic: Dine a la quarantine, as experts advise? Or disregard the risks and gather in our family’s embrace? Eighty-one years ago, the U.S. was similarly divided over Turkey Day. Week after anguished week, bold headlines documented the tense national hand wringing.

The issue then wasn’t how to celebrate, but when.

Traditionally, the holiday fell on the final Thursday of the month. In 1939, November had five Thursdays, the last one coming on November 30, making for a late Thanksgiving. Retailers lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move the holiday one week earlier, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. Eager to do anything he could to help a shaky economy still trying to emerge from the Depression, FDR agreed.

On August 14, just three months before Thanksgiving, Roosevelt casually announced his plan during an informal press conference at his summer home on Campobello Island. “I have been hearing from a great many people for the last six years, complaints that Thanksgiving came too close to Christmas,” he said. So he told reporters he was making a change: Thanksgiving would come a week early that year, and in 1940 as well.

All hell broke loose.

The decision quickly became front-page news and ignited a firestorm of controversy. Many (though not all) retailers were happy, but calendar makers complained — the president’s decision instantly made millions of their printed calendars inaccurate. High school and college football coaches were apoplectic — the big Thanksgiving Day game would fall on the wrong date!

Cartoonists and columnists had a field day. Roosevelt was attacked for high-handedness. Critics called the new date “Franksgiving,” and cartoons picked up on the football theme by depicting Roosevelt  “Moving the Goalposts.”

The public bombarded the White House with letters and telegrams. Tearful brides who had planned a Thanksgiving-weekend wedding and children with Thanksgiving birthdays pleaded with the president to change his mind. Shelby O. Bennett of Shinnston, West Virginia, wrote a sarcastic letter saying that he had a list of other changes for the president to make, including, “Have Sundays changed to Wednesday,” and “Have Mondays to be Christmas.”

People who considered FDR’s New Deal a crackpot economic experiment proclaimed this to be the last straw, an attitude summed up in a ditty that appeared in the Elmira Star Gazette:

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

Until we hear from Washington.

A poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion said that only 29 per cent of the country approved — and that virtually none of them were Republicans. When asked about the decision, Republican governor of Wyoming Nels Smith responded derisively that it was “the first time the president has done something that didn’t cost the taxpayers a lot of money.” Nevertheless, he said he disapproved.

FDR’s holiday proclamation was, however, only a guideline. It was up to the states to decide when to mark Thanksgiving Day 1939. They split right down the middle: 23 states stuck to the original day, and 23 states picked the new day. Colorado and Texas, hedging their bets, celebrated both. (“Thank God that Thanksgiving only comes twice a week!” one over-indulging celebrant reportedly quipped.) Surprisingly, the division of states was not along partisan lines — there were Democrat and Republican governors on both sides.

The controversy could have been even more intense. Roosevelt entertained the idea of moving Thanksgiving to Monday, to make a three-day holiday. His staff consulted religious leaders and nixed the idea. “The Protestants will raise hell,” wrote press secretary Steve Early in a memo to the president.

By 1941, Roosevelt relented. His bold experiment was just creating confusion and division. Not satisfied with Roosevelt’s retreat, Congress took action of its own. On December 26, 1941, just three weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Congress took the time to pass a law declaring Thanksgiving would henceforth be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Even in time of war — or perhaps especially then — they thought it important to unite the country around a shared holiday and ensure that no president would ever again mess with Thanksgiving.

Rick Beyer is an author, documentary filmmaker and producer, and co-host (with Chris Anderson) of the History Happy Hour livecast on the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours Facebook and YouTube page. One of his books is The Greatest Stories Never Told. He lives in Chicago.