Thanksgiving was celebrated on the last Thursday of November until 1939 when a five Thursday November threatened to damage the already depressed economy by shortening the lucrative holiday shopping season—it was considered tacky to display Christmas decoration or advertise Christmas sales before Thanksgiving—so Franklin Roosevelt declared Thanksgiving would be observed a week earlier.
Detractors objected and the actual date Thanksgiving was observed varied based on political party lines—Democrats on the penultimate Thursday and Republicans on the last. This practice was dubbed "Franksgiving" and continued until 1941 when Congress passed legislation to officially declare Thanksgiving a national holiday occurring on the fourth Thursday of November, thus settling the ambiguity of the appropriate date.
Incidentally, Thanksgiving was only celebrated in New England as a regional holiday until Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday at the request of a women's recipe magazine editor in 1863.
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