Off Topic - Thanksgiving Wind Down

[CdnMN 0]

Everyone must be winding down or have gone home already. It is sooooo boring here at work.

4 hours until I pick my mother up at the airport. She's flying in from Ontario for a visit.

A bit of Thanksgiving Trivia I looked up to pass the time.

In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale,[10] proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863.

Abraham Lincoln's successors as president followed his example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with this tradition. November had five Thursdays that year, and Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. In 1940 and 1941, years in which November had four Thursdays, he declared the third one as Thanksgiving. Although many popular histories state otherwise, he made clear that his plan was to establish it on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one. With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression. At the time, advertising goods for Christmas before Thanksgiving was considered inappropriate. Fred Lazarus, Jr., founder of the Federated Department Stores (later Macy's), is credited with convincing Roosevelt to push Thanksgiving back a week to expand the shopping season.

- And now Christmas shopping season starts at about the same time as halloween.