Whipped cream even makes Monday better...

Thank goodness for whipped cream...the condiment that can even make Monday a little bit better...

...well, I think it was Monday...

November 21 was the Monday before November 24. November 24 was Thanksgiving Day, which happened to fall, once again, on a Thursday. And that’s the catalyst for this little adventure...which, by the way, we addressed one time in the distant, or maybe not so distant, past.

Thanksgiving Day was a holiday for those of us who toil at The Paragraph Factory. Since Thanksgiving Day was a holiday, we had to make a few changes to how we do things.

Due to the celebration of eating too much, the local newspaper, which appears on Thursday, had to move everything on our “normal” schedule up by one day.

A Library of Congress article dating all the way back to 2002 which I discovered offered some insight about  the celebration of Thanksgiving on a Thursday...the fourth Thursday of November, more specifically:

“Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. But that was not always the case. 

“When Abraham Lincoln was president in 1863, he proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be our national Thanksgiving Day. 

“In 1865, Thanksgiving was celebrated the first Thursday of November, because of a proclamation by President Andrew Johnson, and, in 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant chose the third Thursday for Thanksgiving Day. 

“In all other years, until 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated as Lincoln had designated, the last Thursday in November.

“Then, in 1939, responding to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday back a week, to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. 

“The association had made a similar request in 1933, but at that time, Roosevelt thought the change might cause too much confusion. As it turns out, waiting to make the change in 1939 didn’t avoid any confusion.

“At the time, the president’s 1939 proclamation only directly applied to the District of Columbia and federal employees. While governors usually followed the president’s lead with state proclamations for the same day, on this year, 23 of the 48 states observed Thanksgiving Day on November 23, 23 states celebrated on November 30, and Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays to be holidays. 

“Football coaches scrambled to reschedule games set for November 30, families didn’t know when to have their holiday meals, calendars were inaccurate in half of the country, and people weren’t sure when to start their Christmas shopping.

“After two years of confusion and complaint, President Roosevelt signed legislation establishing Thanksgiving Day as the fourth Thursday in November. Roosevelt, recognizing the problems caused by his 1939 decree, had announced a plan to return to the traditional Thanksgiving date in 1942.” 

As often happens, I have digressed...let’s see if we can get back on track...

Due to last week’s big holiday, Monday pretty much became Tuesday for those of us at The Paragraph Factory who engage in the task of generating the weekly newspaper. 

Actually, Monday was more like a combination of Monday and Tuesday. Mon-Tuesday? Montuesday? Twosday? Doesn’t matter. 

The implication of having Monday and Tuesday on the same day again offered a bit of a challenge. If Monday and Tuesday of last week were Tuesday, what was Tuesday? Why, it was Tuesday, of course.

Then there was Wednesday, which, at least for those of us at The Paragraph Factory, was Thursday. That’s because last Thursday was the aforementioned Thanksgiving Day holiday.

“Normally,” we produce our Monday newspaper, the Monday’s Pub., on Thursday, which might suggest that the publication should be called Thursday’s Pub., which might work...except for the fact that the paper we produce on Thursday comes out on Monday, which, during most weeks, is plain old Monday. So, last Wednesday became Thursday. Last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, became sort of a “none day.” 

Thanksgiving Day was, naturally, followed by Friday. However, for some people, Friday seemed like a Monday, since that last day of the work week was followed by a day when many folks did not have to work. 

Friday, which seemed like Monday, was followed by Saturday and Sunday, which seemed like, well, Saturday and Sunday.

And then, it was Monday. Again. Hooray. Yours truly spent another day toiling at The Paragraph Factory. At the end of the day, I drove home...in the dark...on full alert for deer along the highway. 

Dinner on Monday night featured leftovers...from Saturday...or maybe they were from Sunday... Dessert included some whipped cream. Which, indeed, made Monday, or whatever day it was, a little bit better.