context.variableManager.setValue rewriting date format? ...

We're pretty new to NL, using 7.3.

We can use JS to create a new random date, and that works, in the format example 12/15/2020.

But when we try to use that as a variable via:
context.variableManager.setValue()

It ends up formatted like this in our call:
December 15, 2020

Are we doing anything obviously wrong here? (I assume we are)

Thanks in advance!