When is Thanksgiving?
Answer
The fourth Thursday in November
Explanation
Thanksgiving Day in the United States falls on the fourth Thursday in November every year. Specific calendar examples in this period include November 26, 2026; November 25, 2027; November 23, 2028; and November 22, 2029. The fourth-Thursday rule was set by federal statute on December 26, 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Public Law 77-379, codifying the date after several years of confusion that he had created by trying to move the holiday earlier in some years to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.
Before that, Thanksgiving had been observed by annual presidential proclamation on the last Thursday of November, a tradition begun by President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863, with a proclamation drafted by Secretary of State William Seward. Lincoln set the holiday in the middle of the Civil War (the proclamation came two and a half months after the Union victory at Gettysburg) to express gratitude for the country's blessings and to encourage national unity.
Earlier proclamations had been issued on a one-time basis: George Washington proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving for November 26, 1789, the first under the Constitution, and the Continental Congress proclaimed days of thanksgiving in 1777 (after the Battle of Saratoga) and several other times during the Revolutionary War. The colonial origins are usually traced to a three-day harvest feast held in the autumn of 1621 by the Plymouth Colony Pilgrims and approximately 90 Wampanoag people led by Massasoit, although that event was not called Thanksgiving and was not annual.
The fourth-Thursday rule produces dates between November 22 and November 28. Thanksgiving is one of the eleven federal public holidays listed at 5 U.S.C. section 6103(a), and federal employees, banks, and most private businesses are closed. The day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) is not a federal holiday but is widely observed as a shopping day.
Customary observances include family gatherings, large meals featuring turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City (held since 1924), college and professional football games, and the presidential pardoning of one or two turkeys at the White House (a ceremonial tradition since the early 1990s with origins going back to 1947).
Why this matters for your test
Knowing the date pattern allows applicants to plan around Thanksgiving as a major federal holiday with widespread closures and family observances. It also ties them to a holiday that, more than most, is a shared national ritual marked in similar ways across regions, religions, and political affiliations.
Source: USCIS 128 Civics Questions (2025)
