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A Top Ten List For Thanksgiving
November 28, 2024
November 2024 Friday’s e-links: A Visualization Atlas
November 29, 2024
For a smile, do look at Thanksgiving Economics through a West Wing lens.
In this episode, President Bartlet calls the Butterball Hotline:
Where are we going? From a fictitious president to the real ones that influenced Thanksgiving.
Significance of Thanksgiving Day
In a proclamation that he issued on October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that the nation was “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity…” Still, while referring to the suffering of the entire nation, he reminded us that we could be thankful that, even with “needful diversions” of resources to the national defense, we’ve preserved peace with foreign nations and domestic productivity.
As a result, expressed below, he said we all should “observe the last Thursday in November as a Day of Thanksgiving…”
I would like to note that he spoke to all Americans in his Thanksgiving Proclamation.
Our Bottom Line: Thanksgiving Economics
Roughly 70 years later, President Franklin Roosevelt celebrated Thanksgiving on November 30th. Concerned that there were just 24 shopping days until Christmas, after that, he tweaked the timing. On December 26, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt, with the Congress, resolved that the fourth Thursday (not the last one) in November would be a Thanksgiving holiday. Their goal was to maximize the shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year though, an uncooperative calendar produced an unusually short 27 days between the two holidays.
However, the National Retail Federation predicted that our spending would top a previous high from 2019. At $902 a person ($25 more than last year), we will be directing approximately $641 to gifts for family and friends:
My sources and more: This year’s update is directly from President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, a description of the Roosevelt tweak, and then a treasure trove of facts from the National Retail Federation.
When we celebrate the holiday, let’s also recall the significance of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation.
