print email comment close Featured Documents: Congress Establishes Thanksgiving URL: http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/thanksgiving/ Description: An essay on the establishment in the U.S. of Thanksgiving as a legal holiday, beginning with the original proclamation of Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a day of public Thanksgiving. A subsequent proclamation in 1939 moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday of November (due to concerns about a shortened Christmas shopping season), and a 1941 resolution established "the fourth Thursday in November as the federal Thanksgiving Day holiday." From the National Archives. Publisher: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) LII Database Information: Record 26998 created by Jennifer English on 09/30/2008 Last modification on 11/12/2008 Published: 11/13/2008   Funding agency: California State Library LII Item ID: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/26998