My original Thanksgiving Rant is here. This is the same thing, just with the politics toned down.
Once upon a time, Thanksgiving always fell on the last Thursday of the month, regardless of whether that month had five Thursdays or four. But in the height of the Great Depression, in a year where November happened to have five Thursdays, FDR wanted to stimulate the economy. He chose to do this by trying to get people to start the Christmas shopping season a bit earlier. Naturally he did this by having Congress pass legislation that said it's okay to start your holiday shopping before Thanksgiving.
No, wait. He didn't do that. That would just be cray-cray. Even for a guy who thought it was a-okay to tell people they had to fork over their gold for a fraction of what they paid for it, the notion of compelling people to start their Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving appeared so utterly ludicrous and obviously unconstitutional, that he did something else: he changed the date of Thanksgiving.
Yes, there it is. The reason Thanksgiving is always on the fourth Thursday rather than the last one is because a the father of modern America's bloated government thought it would be too radical for them to do their Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. That is why I find Christmas music before Thanksgiving so utterly nauseating. FDfreakingR thought it could wait until afterwards; why can't you?
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