Should We Move Turkey Day?

“Moving Thanksgiving sounds nuts, but it’s not unprecedented,” says Steve Friess:

The first time the Pilgrims and Indians broke bread together back in 1621, they did so somewhere between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, so we’re already way off the mark. Starting in 1863, Presidents issued annual declarations for the holiday and pegged it for the final Thursday of November, which meant it could fall even later than it does this year.

Then, in 1939, Thanksgiving was expected to fall on Nov. 30, leaving a scant 24 shopping days until Christmas Eve, and retailers begged for a reprieve amid a fragile but steady economic recovery. (Sound familiar?) FDR obliged, moving it to Nov. 23 that year and Nov. 24 in 1940. In a pre-TV era of more cumbersome communications, there was widespread confusion and pushback from some states, so Congress in 1941 officially slated Thanksgiving for the fourth Thursday of the month. The effort did produce a victory, though — the banishment of a fifth-Thursday holiday.

Brian Palmer wonders if holding Thanksgiving earlier (say, in October with Canadian Thanksgiving) would prove an economic boon:

There’s no indication that Canadians spend more on gifts because they hold their holiday parades early in the year. Despite a slightly higher per capita GDP, Canadians spend less on Christmas than people in the United States do. In 2011, for example, the average Canadian planned to spend $582.70 on Christmas gifts, compared with $646 for the average American. (The Canadian dollar was approximately even with the U.S. dollar that year.) The holiday shopping habits of the two countries are rapidly converging, though. In the last couple of years, Canadian malls, especially those near the border, have begun holding Black Friday sales and opening early on the day after U.S. Thanksgiving.