The holiday shopping season is short, but Americans will spend anyway

How it works: Except that one time Franklin D. Roosevelt monkeyed around with the date and caused chaos, Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November.

• The earliest possible day we can turkey up is Nov. 22 — that's if the first of November is a Thursday — and translates to 32 days of official Christmas shopping season, starting on Black Friday through Christmas Eve.
• The latest possible day is Nov. 28 (when the first of November hits on a Friday). That's the situation this year, and it means only 26 days for official shopping.

Zoom in: Stanford economists Neale Mahoney and Ryan Cummings looked at retail sales going back to 1992 and found little correlation between total retail sales growth and the number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Follow the money: Companies aren't waiting around for Black Friday — major retailers now kick off the season as early as August, as Axios' Kelly Tyko reported last year.

Flashback: In 1939 President Roosevelt abruptly moved Thanksgiving up a week to stimulate the economy. "Franksgiving" caused an outcry and split the country in two, down familiar partisan lines, as this delightful Washington Post story recounts.