Overview
- The holiday is set by law for the fourth Thursday of November each year.
- Banks, government offices and mail delivery pause nationwide, while some supermarkets and retailers open with reduced hours.
- Black Friday is not an official holiday but commonly marks the start of the holiday shopping period.
- The popular 1621 harvest-meal origin story in present-day Massachusetts is disputed, with accounts describing Wampanoag warriors responding to celebratory gunfire rather than a formal invitation.
- Presidential proclamations shaped the observance, with Abraham Lincoln making it a national holiday and Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing the modern fourth-Thursday timing to extend the shopping season.