Louisiana, Here’s Why Thanksgiving is So Late This Year

If memory serves me correctly the Walmart in Opelousas started their Christmas displays a week before Halloween. Halloween displays were up at the Lowes in Lafayette just after the first day of school in August. And somewhere in New Orleans, it is always Mardi Gras. It's no wonder folks in Louisiana stay in "holiday mode" all year round. It's just too confusing to not be, if you know what I mean.

But we do have a major holiday staring us in the face in just a few days. To be honest, I swear I thought Thanksgiving was this Thursday and not November 28th. Now, if you're like me, and based on conversations we've had you are, you are probably a bit confused by the delay in Turkey Day as well.

You can point to two things and they both start with the letter "C". The calendar and the Congress are the reason we will give thanks as a nation Thursday, November 28th. And how we arrived at that date is no small feat.

Thanksgiving started back in the days of George Washington. He proclaimed November 26th as a national day of thanks. There were subsequent proclamations from various Presidents and then Abraham Lincoln got involved. He suggested the National Day of Thanks be celebrated on the last day of November.

This was all well and good until November 1939 when Thanksgiving would fall on the very last day of November. This concerned economists who felt the "shortened Christmas Shopping Season" would affect the nation's economy. So President Franklin Roosevelt moved the holiday to the second to last Thursday in November. Thirty-two states went along with FDR and another sixteen didn't. You can only imagine the confusion.

Finally, Congress took the initiative in 1941 to bring the celebrations together and officially made the last Thursday in November the National Day of Thanks. That still doesn't answer why Thanksgiving is so late this year, does it?

The reason is the other "C" in the calendar. This year the first day of November was on a Friday. That means the fourth Thursday is the 28th. This also means there are only two days between Thanksgiving and the beginning of December.

So, holiday procrastinators, if you wait until the turkey is cold next Thursday, you're going to be woefully behind on your holiday plans. After all, you'll only have 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.