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FRASIER’S FRIDAY FACT

Volume XXXIX

11/24/2017

Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a happy and filling Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for all of you who have subscribed to Frasier's Friday Fact. We, much like the participants in the original Thanksgiving, are pilgrims on a journey - and that journey is to cherish knowledge and to continually build our mental database of useless information to use at parties.

Well, folks, first - a correction. The subject of last week's email incorrectly read "Frasier's Friday Fact, Volume XXXVII," when in fact, it was supposed to be Volume XXXVIII. My apologies. We have now correctly returned to XXXIX.

Second, and more importantly, the Fact. Some of you may be out Black Friday shopping today. Well, in 1939, you may have had an extra week to do your holiday spending. That's because Franklin Roosevelt decided to move the holiday back one week in 1939, hoping to bolster retail sales during the waning years of the Great Depression. This led to some general confusion - 23 states' governments and D.C. recognized the non-traditional date, 22 states stuck with the traditional date, and the remaining three – Colorado, Mississippi, and Texas – gave holidays in both weeks (sounds like my idea of a good time). In 1941, Congress passed a joint resolution naming Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, and most States followed suit. However, Texas was the last to change its state law, and observed Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November (which was sometimes the fourth, but also sometimes the fifth) until 1956.

Stay full, my friends.

Fraish