Page "Article One of the United States Constitution" Paragraph 41

Originally, the Constitution provided that the annual meeting was to be on the first Monday in December unless otherwise provided by law.

The government under the Articles of Confederation had determined, as a transitional measure to the new constitution, that the date for " commencing proceedings " under the U. S. Constitution would be March 4, 1789.

Since the first term of the original federal officials began on this date and ended 2, 4, or 6 years later, this became the date on which new federal officials took office in subsequent years.

This meant that, every other year, although a new Congress was elected in November, it did not come into office until the following March, with a " lame duck " Congress convening in the interim.

As modern communications and travel made it less necessary to wait 4 months from Election Day to the swearing-in of the elected officials, it became increasingly cumbersome to elect officials in November but wait until March for them to take office.

Congress eventually proposed that elected officials take office in January, instead of March ; since this required cutting short ( by a couple of months ) the terms of the elected federal officials at the time of the proposal, Congress proposed the Twentieth Amendment, which established the present dates for when federal officials take office.

While the Constitution always granted Congress the authority to meet on a different day without the need to pass an amendment, § 2 of the Twentieth Amendment " tidied up " the constitutional text by paralleling the original provision requiring that the Congress meet at least once a year in December, and changing it to January 3 ( unless changed by law ).

Although the original Constitution allowed Congress to change its annual meeting date by statute, this change eliminated any reference to a requirement in the Constitution that a lame duck Congress meet in the period between the election of a new Congress and its taking office.