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Heads Up: Thanksgiving Is Happening a Little Earlier This Year

Thanksgiving is still eons away, but maybe you're the kind of planner who already has your Thanksgiving day menu in the works (and for that, we bow down to you). Or maybe you're looking to snag reservations at a restaurant open on Thanksgiving day, which can definitely take some advance preparation too. Whether you're hosting the biggest food holiday of the year or thinking about letting a professional cook the feast, early planning can help stave off calendar-related panic as the day approaches.

So, when is Thanksgiving in 2023?

If you find yourself checking the calendar every year and wondering about your memory, don't worry – you're not losing it. Chalk it up to a date that moves around from year to year, just to keep us on our toes.

Last year, Thanksgiving was November 24, and this year it falls on November 23.

Why does Thanksgiving always fall on the fourth Thursday of November?

We have a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, a prolific writer with a serious love of the day, to thank for the existence of the national holiday in the first place. Hale, who also wrote the song "Mary Had a Little Lamb," penned a slew of newspaper editorials and letters to governors, presidents and other politicians over the span of 36 years (yes, that's almost four decades) lobbying for them to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Her persistent campaign earned her the well-deserved title, "The mother of Thanksgiving."

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In 1863, all of her hard work finally paid off. Abraham Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as a day for the whole nation to ask God to, “Commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation” as well as give thanks for the Union Army win at Gettysburg. But Hale's campaign wasn't totally unprecedented. Historians believe that Lincoln chose that particular day because the first national day of gratitude — called for by George Washington to mark the nation's triumph in the Revolutionary War —was on Thursday, November 26, 1789. Presidents James Madison and John Adams had also designated similar days of thanks, but it wasn't until Lincoln's proclamation that it became an official national holiday.

In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday for a purely economic reason. It was in the midst of the Great Depression and retailers were suffering. Roosevelt hoped the shift in timing would give shoppers more time to hit the stores before Christmas, to help boost retail sales. But the decision was hugely unpopular with Americans, many of whom even mocked it as "Franksgiving." He caved to popular opinion and, in 1941, changed the date back to the last Thursday in November. The decision stuck, and we've kept it there ever since.

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