You're sitting at the dinner table, staring at a half-eaten slice of pumpkin pie, and someone drops a bomb. "Wait," your cousin says, "wasn't Thanksgiving earlier last year? Isn't Thanksgiving the third Thursday of November?" Suddenly, half the room is nodding. The other half is pulling out their phones to check the calendar. Honestly, it's a valid question. If you feel like the date jumps around more than a caffeinated squirrel, you aren't crazy.
The short answer is no. It is not the third Thursday. It’s the fourth. But there is a very weird, very political reason why so many people—maybe even your grandma—still think it's the third.
We can thank Abraham Lincoln for the "last Thursday" tradition, which he started in 1863. For decades, that was the gold standard. If November had five Thursdays, you ate turkey on the fifth one. Simple. Then came 1939, and things got messy. We were coming out of the Great Depression, and retailers were panicking. They looked at the calendar and realized November had five Thursdays that year. They realized that a late Thanksgiving meant a shorter Christmas shopping season. Naturally, they did what any lobbyist would do: they complained to the President.
The year Franklin D. Roosevelt "moved" Thanksgiving
In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to listen to those retailers. He moved the holiday up a week. He thought that by giving people more time to shop before Christmas, he could jumpstart the economy. It sounded like a logical plan on paper. In reality? People lost their minds.
Imagine you’ve already booked your train ticket home. You’ve planned your local high school football rivalry game. Then, suddenly, the President tells you the holiday is seven days earlier. It was chaos. Republicans at the time called it "Franksgiving." They viewed it as a blatant attempt to mess with a sacred American tradition just to pad the pockets of department stores like Macy's and Gimbels.
The country literally split in half.
Some states followed the President’s new "third Thursday" (or rather, the second-to-last Thursday) rule. Others, mostly those with Republican governors, stuck to the traditional last Thursday. If you lived in Connecticut and worked in New York, you might have ended up with two different Thanksgivings. Some people actually got two days off work, while others got none. It was a mess of scheduling conflicts that makes our modern "Black Friday" debates look like a peaceful tea party.
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Why the "fourth Thursday" became the law of the land
By 1941, even Roosevelt had to admit the experiment was a bit of a flop. Data showed that moving the holiday didn't actually increase retail spending that much. People just bought their gifts later or spent the same amount of money in a shorter window.
So, Congress stepped in.
They wanted to end the confusion once and for all. On December 26, 1941, Roosevelt signed a resolution that officially set Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November. They chose "fourth" instead of "last" because they wanted to ensure that even in years with five Thursdays, the holiday wouldn't fall too late in the month. This was the compromise. It gave retailers a decent-sized shopping window without pushing the holiday into December, but it also prevented the "Franksgiving" whiplash of moving it too early.
When the fourth Thursday is also the last Thursday
This is where the math gets slightly annoying. In most years, the fourth Thursday is the same as the last Thursday. But every few years, November has five Thursdays. This happened in 2023, and it will happen again in 2029.
In those specific years, the "isn't Thanksgiving the third Thursday of November" confusion usually peaks. People see a full week of November left after the holiday and assume something must be wrong with their calendar.
- 2024: November 28 (4th Thursday)
- 2025: November 27 (4th Thursday)
- 2026: November 26 (4th Thursday)
Notice a pattern? The date is always between November 22 and November 28. If it’s November 21, it’s too early. If it’s November 29, it’s too late.
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The retail influence on your dinner plate
It’s easy to blame FDR for the confusion, but the retail industry has always been the shadow puppet master of this holiday. Before Black Friday was a "thing," the unwritten rule was that no store would advertise Christmas sales until after the Thanksgiving parade.
Moving the date was purely a business move. Even today, the "fourth Thursday" remains a point of contention for logistics companies and school districts. A late Thanksgiving (like November 28) compresses the entire holiday season into just a few weeks. This puts immense pressure on the US Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx. It also means that some years you have almost a full month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and other years you’re basically starting your Christmas shopping while still digesting the stuffing.
Historical outliers and the "Franksgiving" map
If you really want to dive into the weeds, look at the 1940 and 1941 maps of the United States. It looked like a patchwork quilt of holiday celebrations. In 1940, 31 states celebrated "Franksgiving" on the third Thursday, while 17 states stuck to the "old" Thanksgiving on the last Thursday.
Mississippi was the only state that couldn't decide and just celebrated both.
This regional divide is why your older relatives might still be confused. If they grew up in a household where the date changed based on who was in the White House, that memory sticks. It wasn’t just a calendar change; it was a cultural war. Football coaches were particularly livid. Many college rivalries, like the Texas-A&M game, were traditionally played on Thanksgiving. When the date moved, schedules that had been set years in advance were thrown into total disarray.
Modern confusion: Why we still get it wrong
Digital calendars have mostly saved us from showing up to dinner a week early, but the "third Thursday" myth persists because of how we visualize the month. We often think of months in four-week chunks. When we see a "extra" week at the end of November, our brains try to autocorrect the holiday to the middle of the month.
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Also, other holidays follow the "third" rule. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the third Monday of January. Presidents' Day is the third Monday of February. It’s a common cadence for American federal holidays. Thanksgiving is the outlier. It’s the one that hugs the end of the month, acting as the gateway to the "winter" season.
How to calculate the date without a calendar
If you want to be the "expert" at the table next year, there’s a simple trick.
Look at the first day of November. If November 1st is a Friday or Saturday, you’re going to have a "late" Thanksgiving (the 27th or 28th). If November 1st is a Thursday, Thanksgiving is as early as it can possibly be: the 22nd.
Knowing this doesn't just help with dinner plans. It helps with travel. The "fourth Thursday" rule is the reason why the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. Millions of people are all trying to hit that same narrow window. If it were the third Thursday, the travel patterns would likely be more spread out, but we’d lose that cozy transition into the Christmas season that the late-November slot provides.
Actionable ways to handle the date confusion
Stop guessing and start planning. If you're hosting, you need to know the date at least six months out to secure a fresh turkey or book the right caterer.
- Sync your digital calendars early. Google and Apple calendars usually have this hard-coded, but double-check that you haven't manually entered a "recurring" event that follows the wrong logic.
- The "Plus One" Rule. Always check if November has five Thursdays. If it does, your holiday is on the fourth one, leaving a full "bonus week" before December.
- Travel on the Holiday. If you're tired of the Wednesday chaos, fly on the actual fourth Thursday morning. It’s often the cheapest and quietest time to be in an airport because everyone else is already at home arguing about whether it's the third or fourth Thursday.
- Educate the family. Next time someone asks "isn't Thanksgiving the third Thursday of November," tell them about 1939. It's a great way to pivot the conversation away from politics or why you're still single.
Ultimately, the date matters less than the gravy, but knowing the "why" behind the fourth Thursday helps make sense of the peculiar rhythm of the American autumn. Whether it falls on the 22nd or the 28th, the fourth Thursday is the legal, historical, and cultural anchor of the season. Stick to the fourth, and you'll never miss the bird.