Jack Benny and the Two Thanksgivings

Thanksgiving. So starts the time of the year when I REALLY start to get nostalgic for times that I never lived in. I'll explain that by starting with Jack Benny and the two Thanksgivings.


I was on the treadmill at the gym listening to Jack Benny radio shows, as per usual. The cast was telling jokes about the two Thanksgivings this year. Huh? What? Jack was debating how to best use this situation in order to save some money and still come out looking generous. Huh? Two Thanksgivings?


I learned from the cast that the President, Franklin Roosevelt at the time, had changed the date of Thanksgiving. Furthermore, despite this Presidential decree many families were still celebrating the old date for the Holiday.

So I hit Wikipedia to learn some more.  It's kind of an ironic story. Apparently, in 1939 Thanksgiving was landing on November 30th. The Thanksgiving tradition until then had been to celebrate the holiday on the last Thursday of the month. The retail community was complaining because this would put the holiday too late into the year to properly kick off the Christmas shopping season. And with the depression on, retailers needed to get every little bit of help they could get.

And... get this... it was considered wrong to decorate and start selling Christmas product before Thanksgiving.

...

HA!

Lemme repeat that from a different angle. Retailers in 1939 were so concerned about sales that they actually lobbied to have the holiday moved, rather than show bad taste and start decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving.

HA!

This is a beautiful way of learning about history and the differences in our culture through entertainment.

My buddy Larry Lineberry always complains loudly whenever we see Christmas decorations up too early. Complains to the point of wanting to boycott the store. I always brushed him off about this, thinking that the viewpoint was naive. Retailers in this day and age would do absolutely anything to increase sales, and there's very little we can do to stop that juggernaut.

But back then, it was considered bad taste to decorate before Thanksgiving. I love it. Larry would love it.

Jack Benny was famous for his holiday broadcasts. He gives Easter and the Easter parade a slight mention. But he always seems to have a Halloween party, everyone comes over for Thanksgiving, his Christmas shopping episodes are classics and well remembered, and I love his New Year's episodes where he closes out the old year and greats the new one.

My own Thanksgivings don't really seem to stick out in my memory. When I was a kid, we made it a point to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade every year. Mom would buy comics for me and coloring books for my sisters to keep us occupied and out of her way while she prepared the Thanksgiving feast. So there are some fond feelings and traditions that I do follow.

My own children won't sit still for Macy's parade. They get bored out of their mind and end up wandering off. So most Thanksgiving mornings, I end up sitting and watching the parade alone while everyone else is off doing their own thing.


But I usually have some Christmas themed comics sitting in my lap while the parade is on.

...more on that later.

Thanks,
DCD