Franksgiving

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday one week earlier than normal, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during one of the final years of the Great Depression. This led to much upheaval and protest, causing some to deride the holiday as Franksgiving. The term Franksgiving is a portmanteau of Franklin and Thanksgiving and was coined by Atlantic City mayor Charles D. White in 1939. In 1941, Congress compromised by fixing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. History In August 1939, Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins was told by a merchant that the late calendar date of Thanksgiving that year (November 30) could possibly have an adverse effect on retail sales. At the time, it was considered bad form for retailers to display Christmas decorations or have "Christmas" sales before the celebration of Thanksgiving, a phenomenon referred to as "Christmas creep". In keeping with a custom begun by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, U.S. Presidents had declared a general day of thanksgiving to be observed on the last Thursday in November. By late August of that year, President Roosevelt decided to deviate from this custom and declare November 23, the second-to-last Thursday, as Thanksgiving that year. The plan encountered immediate opposition. Alf Landon, Roosevelt's Republican challenger in the preceding election, called the declaration "another illustration of the confusion which [Roosevelt's] impulsiveness has caused so frequently during his administration. If the change has any merit at all, more time should have been taken working it out... instead of springing it upon an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler." While not all critics were political opponents of the president, most parts of New England (then a Republican stronghold relative to the rest of the nation) were among the most vocal areas. James Frasier, the chairman of the selectmen of Plymouth, Massachusetts (the location of the first Thanksgiving holiday) "heartily disapproved".