In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order moving Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday.
Roosevelt’s decision was widely criticized. According to a Gallup poll, over 60 percent of the country opposed the new date, while Alf Landon, Roosevelt’s opponent in the presidential election of 1936, accused FDR of “springing it upon an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler.”
But retailers were among the most vocal supporters. They argued that because Thanksgiving fell on November 30 that year, they would lose out on an additional week of holiday sales without a change in date.
The controversy gave rise to the portmanteau “Franksgiving,” combining Franklin with Thanksgiving, often used derisively to mock the new date. The musical Holiday Inn starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby included a Franksgiving joke: a cartoon turkey hopscotches across a November calendar to land on a date before turning to the camera and shrugging in defeat.