Thanksgiving lands on second-latest date possible this year

(NEXSTAR) — Halloween has come and gone, which may have you looking toward your calendar to find out how soon the next major holiday, Thanksgiving, will arrive.

If November 27 feels incredibly far off, you aren't wrong. This is the second-latest date that Thanksgiving can happen. We saw the latest possible Thanksgiving in 2024 when it landed on November 28.

The earliest we can celebrate Thanksgiving is November 22, an occurrence we haven't seen since 2018 and will not see until 2029.

Why does Thanksgiving move around so much, you may be asking?

Like Memorial Day, Labor Day, and the biannual changing of the clocks, Thanksgiving really doesn't move around — it's the dates of the calendar that are changing.

The U.S. has been celebrating Thanksgiving since 1789, when President George Washington issued the first proclamation to establish a “Day of Publick Thanksgivin,” according to The Center for Legislative Archives. It fell on November 26, in case you're curious.

For the next seven decades, the president would issue Thanksgiving Proclamations, though the dates would vary, so much so that there were times when it didn’t happen in November. The Library of Congress reports President James Madison proclaimed Thanksgiving on two different dates — September 9 in 1813 and March 16 in 1815.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln put the proverbial foot down and proclaimed Thanksgiving would be held on the last Thursday of November. There was an exception: President Andrew Johnson is rumored to have forgotten to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1865 and had to quickly put it on the first Thursday of December that year. 

Thanksgiving would continue to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November for another roughly seven decades until 1939. Then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt was said to be concerned that Thanksgiving, falling on November 30 that year, would cut the Christmas shopping season short when the nation was still recovering from the Great Depression.

FDR decided to issue his Thanksgiving proclamation to put the holiday on the second-to-last Thursday of November. A quick look at the calendar shows that effort didn't survive.

While 32 states agreed and rescheduled the holiday, 16 others refused and left Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, according to the Archives. It remained that way until 1941, when Congress finally agreed to put Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. 

Next year, we'll have a slightly earlier Thanksgiving when it lands on November 26.