November's fourth Thursday is not always November's last, and the rule reads fourth for exactly that reason. Most of the United States marks the day over dinner; since 1970 Indigenous people have gathered at Plymouth to mourn.
“the fourth Thursday of November in each year after the year 1941 be known as Thanksgiving Day
The 77th United States Congress fixed the date with House Joint Resolution 41: the House voted for the last Thursday in November, the Senate amended it to the fourth, and the resolution signed on December 26, 1941 made that day a legal public holiday. Presidents had proclaimed days of thanksgiving since 1789, but each proclamation bound only the year it named.
John F. Kennedy signed a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1963 that put the holiday's beginning in two places at once. Proclamation 3560 credits "our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts" with setting aside a time of thanksgiving over three centuries earlier.
Go to the Massachusetts end of that claim and the word is missing. Edward Winslow's letter, printed in London in 1622, describes the 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth and never calls it a thanksgiving. William Bradford, who wrote the colony's own history, does not use the word of that year either.
The day itself is settled. Thanksgiving is a legal public holiday, and federal law names the Thursday it falls on. Everything before that was one president's decision.
DEALS & OFFERS
Thanksgiving ran on November 27 without a tracked deal. Browse past offers from previous years.
On September 28, 1789, the first Federal Congress asked the President to recommend a day of thanksgiving. Washington answered at New York on October 3, naming Thursday, November 26, 1789. His verb was "recommend and assign", and it covered that year only.
By her own account Sarah Josepha Hale had been pushing the idea for fifteen years, setting it out in the Lady's Book and putting the papers before the governors of every state and territory. She wanted the annual thanksgiving made "a National and fixed Union Festival".
Her letter to Abraham Lincoln is dated September 28, 1863. It asks him to appoint "the last Thursday in November (which falls this year on the 26th)" and warns that an immediate proclamation was needed to reach the states in season.
Five days later Lincoln signed Proclamation 106, setting apart "the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise". William H. Seward, whom Hale had also lobbied, countersigned as Secretary of State. That was routine for every proclamation, and not evidence that he wrote it.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Thanksgiving in office fell on November 30, 1933. Business leaders asked him to move it, pointing at the 24 shopping days left before Christmas. He ignored them.
In 1939 he moved it. Proclamation 2373, signed on October 31, designated Thursday, November 23, 1939 as a day of general thanksgiving. It gives no reason, invoking the Pilgrims and Washington and calling the custom hallowed.
Letters poured into the White House, and calendar makers were hit worst because they print years in advance. The National Archives counts 32 states issuing matching proclamations and 16 refusing. Two Thanksgivings then ran side by side for two years.
On October 6, 1941 the House passed a joint resolution naming the last Thursday as the legal holiday. The Senate changed it to the fourth, which the National Archives says would take into account those years when November has five Thursdays. Roosevelt signed it on December 26, 1941.
The statute did not ratify his own practice. He had named the third Thursday in both 1940 and 1941, a week earlier than the old custom and than the rule Congress was writing. The formula splits the difference by year type: in a five-Thursday November it lands on his 1939 choice, in a four-Thursday November on the traditional last Thursday.
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
Mourt's Relation records the graves James named, and the corn.
In 1970 Wamsutta Frank James wrote a speech for Plymouth's 350th-anniversary state dinner saying the Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed his ancestors' graves and stolen their corn. He named his source, Mourt's Relation, and that 1622 book describes a searching party of sixteen men taking the corn and covering a corpse up again.
Thanksgiving is a legal public holiday under 5 U.S.C. 6103, which lists it as the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday. The two are not the same date: from 1942 through 2026 the fourth Thursday was not the last one in 24 of 85 years.
A full-text search of HathiTrust finds Franksgiving in 62 volumes published between 1939 and 1945, among them Business Week and Drug Topics. Who coined it is unknown.
BY THE NUMBERS
TIMELINE
our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a more speciall manner reioyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours
We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.
GOOD TO KNOW
Indigenous people and their allies have gathered at noon on Cole's Hill since 1970 to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the Thanksgiving holiday. United American Indians of New England describe it as a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
An annual ceremony honors the terms of the treaty that ended the Third Anglo-Powhatan War of 1644 to 1646, and the Pamunkey and Mattaponi still observe it. In 1988 Governor Gerald Baliles met the chiefs of the two tribes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, two days before Thanksgiving.
Canada's Holidays Act does not mention Thanksgiving at all. The Act runs to four sections and names three days: Canada Day, Remembrance Day and Victoria Day. The country keeps the holiday; its date rests on a proclamation instead of on that statute.
MYTH VS FACT
The 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth was the first American Thanksgiving.
William Bradford's history uses the word only of 1623, after a drought broke and the colonists set apart a day of thanksgiving. The two standard editions disagree with each other: the 1908 edition of Bradford indexes the first thanksgiving at 1623, while Dexter's 1865 edition of Mourt's Relation puts it at 1621. Neither original text uses the word of 1621.
Turkey was on the table at the 1621 gathering.
Winslow's account of the gathering names no turkey. Bradford writes of great store of wild turkeys, but in a general description of the season's food, not at any gathering.
Ronald Reagan pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey in 1987.
At the Rose Garden ceremony on November 23, 1987, reporters were pressing Ronald Reagan about pardons for North and Poindexter. He deflected, joked that he would have pardoned the turkey, Charlie, and left the bird's fate to a staff member, who said it was going to a pet farm. Two years later, signing the 1989 Thanksgiving proclamation, George Bush said of a tom turkey, "he's granted a Presidential pardon as of right now".
GET INVOLVED
EDITOR'S PICK
READ
READ
LOOK
SHARE
Test your knowledge
Yes. It has been a legal public holiday since the joint resolution signed on December 26, 1941, and it is listed today in 5 U.S.C. 6103.
COLOPHON
Calling all turkey lovers! November is Turkey Lovers Month and we have the perfect recipes, tips, and tricks to make your Thanksgiving feast extra delicious. Gobble gobble!
On Mayflower Day, honor the brave Pilgrims who set sail on a journey of hope and opportunity that would shape American history forever.
Experience the wonder of holiday magic at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade – full of giant balloons, amazing floats, and live performances!
