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Thanksgiving is a day filled with traditions ranging from watching football to making certain foods (cranberry sauce) that nobody really likes. One of the best known traditions, however, is that a turkey is brought to the White House for dinner, and then the president gives it a pardon and it gets to live out its life on a farm.
It is a fun little tradition that takes place every year, but most people don’t know when and why the tradition began.
There is a myth that it first pardon for a turkey was done by President Abraham Lincoln. The story goes that his son, Tad, grew attached to the turkey that was going to be for Thanksgiving dinner and asked his dad to spare it, which he did. In reality, however, this is almost certainly not a true story. The first known time that the story was told was after the president was dead, and even in that story, the turkey was going to be for Christmas dinner, not Thanksgiving.
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More recently, both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have commented that they thought that Harry Truman was the first one to do an official turkey pardon, but there isn’t any good evidence for that either.
There have been some occasional times when presidents gave turkeys unofficial pardons. In 1963, for example, a large turkey was given to President John F. Kennedy, but for whatever reason, he didn’t want it for dinner, so he said that they would just let it grow (it was already 25 kilograms, 55 pounds, so how much more it would grow is questionable).
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan also got turkeys given to them and decided they didn’t want to eat them for dinner, but there wasn’t any type of official ceremony associated with it.
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The first real turkey pardon didn’t happen until 1989 when George H. W. Bush pardoned a turkey due to the growing popularity of the animal rights movement. He received the turkey and then said:
“But let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy – he’s presented a Presidential pardon as of right now – and allow him to live out his days on a children’s farm not far from here.”
From then on, every Thanksgiving you could count on a turkey being pardoned at the White House.
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