When Is Thanksgiving Most Likely To Happen?

I thought I had written this up. Which is good because I didn’t want to spend the energy redoing these calculations.

The date of Thanksgiving, as observed in the United States, is that it’s the fourth Thursday of November. So it might happen anytime from the 22nd through the 28th. But because of the quirks of the Gregorian calendar, it can happen that a particular date, like the 23rd of November, is more or less likely to be a Thursday than some other day of the week.

So here’s the results of what days are most and least likely to be Thanksgiving. It turns out the 23rd, this year’s candidate, is tied for the rarest of Thanksgiving days. It’s not that rare, in comparison. It happens only two fewer times every 400 years than do Thanksgivings on the 22nd of November, the (tied) most common day.