food

[juli17 at aol.com]

s.hayes at qut.edu.au writes:

But  wait--I though Thanksgiving  was the LAST Thursady of November, which 
would  make it next  week?



Sandy: 

There are five Thursdays this November so it  is celebrated on the fourth  
Thursday instead of the last.



Julie:
The history of Thanksgiving as a holiday is thus: The Continental Congress  
proclaimed
the first Thanksgiving holiday in November of 1777. Later, after George  
Washington became
president, he proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving holiday to be  
celebrated on
Nov 26, 1789. Several presidents following, including John Adams and James  
Madison
also proclaimed national Thanksgiving holidays, though the days weren't  
always celebrated
in November, or even in the autumn. Later several governors proclaimed  
Thanksgiving 
holidays in their own states, but another national holiday didn't occur  
until the Civil War...
 
In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national  
Thanksgiving holiday
to occur on the final Thursday in November, 1863. Thereafter there has  
always been a 
national Thanksgiving holiday, occurring annually on the last Thursday of  
November, until
Franklin Roosevelt made a change. In 1938 he declared the second-to-last  
Thursday in
November to henceforth be the day to celebrate Thanksgiving. His motivation  
was to give
merchants a longer period in which to sell goods before Christmas. (This  was 
back in the
long forgotten days when it was considered appropriate to  advertise items 
for Christmas 
only after Thanksgiving, rather than in, say, August!) In Roosevelt's  
defense, this was 
during the Great Depression, so a longer holiday shopping period was needed  
to help 
boost the economy.
 
The only problem for Roosevelt was that this change wasn't considered  
legally binding, 
and several states still persisted in celebrating the holiday on  the last 
day of November. 
In 1941, the U.S. Congress stepped in, and splitting the  difference, they 
passed a bill
requiring Thanksgiving be celebrated on the *fourth* Thursday of November  
(which will
usually fall on the last Thursday of the month, but occasionally--as is the  
case in 2007

with five Thursdays in November--on the second-to-last Thursday). The bill  
became law,
and thus Thanksgiving has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of  November 
for the
past 66 years, with no end to the gluttony in sight :-)
 
(source: Wikipedia)
 
Julie, who posts this for anyone interested in a (brief) history of the  U.S. 
national holiday
 
 
 
 








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