During the depression, in times before stores could conscionably decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving had passed, there was a November with five Thursdays. Thanksgiving had always been celebrated on the last Thursday of November. The last Thursday of this November was the 30th. That meant stores couldn’t ramp up for Christmas until December 1st. Worried that just 24 days of Christmas shopping would damage an already limping economy, the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, announced that this year Thanksgiving would happen on the fourth Thursday.

FDR’s announcement was met with confusion and consternation. Shopping wasn’t the only schedule that hinged on Thanksgiving, there were college football games and class registration. After FDR’s announcement the states were divided about how to enact the holiday. Some states gave a holiday on the fourth Thursday and some kept it on the last Thursday. A small handful of states gave two Thanksgiving holidays.

Radio hosts made merry about the confusion of when to celebrate Thanksgiving, and the whole hullabaloo was derided as Franksgiving. But don’t we always have Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, I hear you ask? And yes. After a couple of years of Franksgiving confusion FDR make Thanksgiving a federal holiday that falls on the fourth Thursday. Most states then aligned their celebrations and rivalry football game scheduling fell in line. Up until the Franskgiving debacle, the holiday had been announced annually by the President.

Thanks to Christmas creep, the whole economic reasoning behind the idea seems ludicrous. But just imagine, an August, September, and October even without Christmas decorations in stores!