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For as long as I've been an entrepreneur living in the US, I've heard about the post-Thanksgiving "holiday slowdown" in relation to venture capital and fund-raising activities in general. 

I've always wondered, does it really occur? Are entrepreneurs and investment bankers really taking it easy after Thanksgiving, or is this just a myth? 

As it turns out, the post-Thanksgiving slowdown is real.  Check out this graph (note: I originally generated this image for a blog posted earlier today on geographic clustering, but the data around the post-Thanksgiving Day dip was so noticeable that I had to call it out) :

This data shows people searching, and news items based on the search terms "venture capital".  Check out the dips.  Now, I don't know about you, but looking at those dips across five years worth of searching tells me this is not only a real phenomenom, but it's a trend that sticks around whether in good times or bad.

That said, the 2008 Thanksgiving holiday shows a tiny dip compared with the other years.  That may suggest to us that this year, for the first time in five years, entrepreneurs and business operators ignored the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in favor of spending a little time searching on Google for 'venture capital'.  It will be interesting to see if the same trend emerges over the end-of-year holidays.