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Holiday has moved day to day Has Thanksgiving Day always fallen on the fourth Thursday in November? -- Tom T., Ashland No, Tom, it hasn't. In fact, according to the Academic American Encyclopedia, the holiday has been celebrated at several different times since the first Thanksgiving in 1621. After that first celebration, which was three days of prayer and feasting by the Plymouth colonists to "give thanks" for their first harvest, it took 168 years before President George Washington proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 26, 1789. It was President Abraham Lincoln who made it an annual national holiday in 1863, to be held on the last Thursday in November. It stayed that way until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the moving of the holiday to the third week of November, primarily in an attempt to extend the Christmas shopping season. Congress returned the holiday to the fourth Thursday in November in 1941. Send your questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; or by fax to (541) 776-4376; or by e-mail to: [email protected] Please include your name, address and phone number for verification. Today's News Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA