Thanksgiving

26 November 2026

Thanksgiving is a federal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November; in 2026 it falls on 26 November, the last Thursday of the month. Americans mark it with a turkey dinner, family travel, parades and football. It is one of the four holidays Congress first granted to federal workers in 1870, and its date was not settled in law until 1941.

The story usually told begins in the autumn of 1621 at Patuxet, now Plymouth, Massachusetts, when the Pokanoket sachem Ousamequin, known to the English as Massasoit, and about 90 of his men shared three days of feasting with the colonists. The only surviving eyewitness account is a letter by Edward Winslow, printed in London in 1622 in Mourt’s Relation, which mentions wildfowl and five deer.

Thanksgiving became a national holiday in stages. President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November in 1863. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date a week earlier to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, and he did the same again in 1940. Sixteen states refused the change and kept the traditional date, so for two years the country celebrated on different days.

Congress settled it in 1941. H.J. Res. 41 passed the House on 6 October with an amendment setting the fourth Thursday rather than the last Thursday, a distinction that matters in years when November has five Thursdays. The Senate amendment changed it to the fourth Thursday, and Roosevelt signed the resolution on 26 December 1941; the fourth Thursday took effect in 1942.

Not everyone in Plymouth marks the day as a feast. Since 1970, United American Indians of New England has held a National Day of Mourning at noon on Cole’s Hill above Plymouth Rock. It began when Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag leader, was invited to speak at a dinner marking the 350th anniversary of the settlers’ arrival and refused to give the speech the organizers wanted.

Sources

• Plimoth Patuxet Museums, “Thanksgiving”
• Plimoth Patuxet Museums, “Eye-Witness Account of the 1621 Harvest Celebration”
• Congressional Research Service, “Thanksgiving: Fact Sheet” (R44279)
• U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian, “The Thanksgiving Holiday”
• United American Indians of New England, “National Day of Mourning”
• Timeanddate.com, “Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2026”

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