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In the United States, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, which places it between November 22 and November 28. This page works out the fourth Thursday for this year and next and counts down to the one still ahead of you. Knowing the exact date matters more for Thanksgiving than for most holidays: it anchors the busiest travel period of the American year, drives grocery shopping for the biggest home-cooked meal on the calendar, and sets the date of Black Friday the morning after.
Thanksgiving was a patchwork of state observances until Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, a custom later presidents followed. The rule held until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday a week earlier to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and give the economy a nudge. The result was chaos remembered as "Franksgiving": roughly half the states celebrated on FDR's date and half on the traditional one, some governors picked both, and football schedules built around the old date were thrown into disarray. Congress stepped in and, from 1942, fixed Thanksgiving by law as the fourth Thursday of November — the rule still used today. (In most years the fourth and last Thursdays are the same day; they differ only when November has five Thursdays.)
Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October — earlier, matching an earlier harvest, and unrelated in origin to the American holiday. If you're coordinating a family gathering or a cross-border work calendar, the two Thanksgivings are about six weeks apart and easy to confuse.
Why does Thanksgiving move every year? Because it's pinned to a weekday — the fourth Thursday of November — rather than a fixed date, so it slides between November 22 and November 28 as the calendar shifts.
When should I book Thanksgiving travel? The Wednesday before and the Sunday after are among the busiest travel days of the year in the U.S. Booking flights several weeks out, and using the countdown to keep the date in view, avoids the worst of the fares and the crowds.