Retailers seek to stretch shortened holiday shopping

(AP) All they want for Christmas is more time. Faced with the shortest holiday shopping season since 2013, retailers are trying to figure out ways to get into the minds of shoppers sooner. Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. In 1939, at the tail-end of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November as a way to goose the economy and create more shopping days before Christmas, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. But people continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday and in 1941, it was officially changed back. This year, Thanksgiving will land on Nov. 28, the latest possible date it can be. That leaves the holiday shopping season with six fewer days than last year.