A Holiday Tradition

Things have gotten so bad, we are told, that the Thanksgiving table is now a battlefield.Advice columnists, psychologists, therapists, podcasters and philosophers counsel us how to avoid or defuse arguments about politics.But sparring at (or about) Thanksgiving isn’t new.

It is, in fact, a very old tradition — no less American than pumpkin pie.Debates were on the menu even before Congress formally declared the federal holiday in 1941.Here, from The Times’s archive, is a sample of what we’ve been arguing about.1.

Thanksgiving itself.In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved up the traditional Thanksgiving Day by a week to stimulate holiday shopping and boost the economy.

The move prompted a national debate.Retailers were pleased and plenty of Americans didn’t seem to mind.

But traditionalists gnashed their teeth.“We here in Plymouth consider the day sacred,” said a local official in the birthplace of the Thanksgiving dinner.“Who,” asked a letter to the editor published by The Times, “wants a turkey one week thinner?” Some governors proclaimed separate Thanksgivings on the original day, inviting chaos that lasted until, in 1941, Congress standardized the date for the whole country.

(Roosevelt, folding, signed the change into law.)Even some who stood to benefit from Roosevelt’s move mocked it.In early November, a shopkeeper in Kokomo, Ind., put a sign in his store window that read: “Do your shopping now.

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