Why Do We Pardon Turkeys on Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is not a good time to be a turkey in the United States. But at least one of these otherwise hapless birds has reason to be thankful on this day, when it is saved from becoming the centerpiece of the feast by none other than the president of the United States.

Thanksgiving turkeys: A fowl history

Though absent from the earliest Thanksgiving feasts, turkeys became a more common hero of the holiday’s dishes by the turn of the 19th century, owing to their availability and the fact that one turkey could feed a family. Turkeys gained traction as a centerpiece of Thanksgiving feasts particularly with the 1827 novel Northwood by Sarah Josepha Hale, which included a chapter with a description of a Thanksgiving in New England that prominently featured roasted turkey. As the bird became more associated with the holiday, it thus became a common household feature every Thanksgiving. Additionally, starting in the 1870s, sending turkeys as gifts to the president for the White House Thanksgiving feast became an honorable routine.

In 1947 the White House announced plans to discourage poultry consumption on Thursdays in an effort to save grain reserves in the aftermath of World War II. This led to a brief fallout between the government and poultry farmers, marked by protests that included sending shipments of hens to the White House. The National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board made peace with the government in December 1947 by presenting Pres. Harry S. Truman with a live turkey. The ceremony was soon conflated with Thanksgiving, and the act of gifting turkeys to the president on that holiday, already popular before 1947, became a full-on tradition. (President Truman is sometimes credited with starting the turkey pardon tradition, but there is no evidence to suggest that he did.)

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The official tradition to pardon turkeys took root much later. Although some accounts trace the first unofficial turkey pardon to Abraham Lincoln, the modern turkey pardon ritual was formalized as an annual White House event by Pres. George H.W. Bush in 1989.

Sparing the turkey

The myth of the original turkey pardon runs thus: In 1863 a turkey was to be slaughtered at the White House for Christmas (not Thanksgiving), during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. One of Lincoln’s sons, Tad, had grown fond of the fowl and pleaded with his father to grant the bird pardon, which Lincoln is said to have done. White House correspondent Noah Brooks wrote about the incident in 1865, and the legend took hold.

Presidents spared turkeys from slaughter for the Thanksgiving feast from time to time afterward. For instance, in 1932 Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt passed on a turkey he received from the Institute of American Poultry Industries to a children’s hospital in Georgia. Pres. John F. Kennedy unofficially pardoned a turkey during a White House ceremony ahead of Thanksgiving in 1963, three days before his assassination. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan granted reprieves to turkeys as well, though they didn’t make it an official tradition; Reagan is, however, credited with being the first president to use the word pardon in regard to a turkey.

It was only in 1989 that Pres. George H.W. Bush sanctioned clemency to a turkey on Thanksgiving and made it a tradition. He joked that the turkey had received an official pardon, and the term stuck. The tradition of presenting the U.S. president with a Thanksgiving turkey therefore gained a ritual of mercy as presidents after Bush continued the practice of granting an official pardon.

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Pardoned turkeys are often released to turkey farms or petting zoos for the adulation of visitors. Frying Pan Park’s Kidwell Farm in Herndon and Turkey Hill Farm at Morven Park, both in Virginia, are two parks that have received these ceremonious survivors. Briefly, in 2005 and 2006, pardoned turkeys served as mascots for the Thanksgiving Day parade at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Pardoned into fame

Turkeys that received the official pardon went unnamed in the early years of the tradition, but Pres. Bill Clinton began to identify the turkeys he spared from the dinner table. Over the years, two turkeys became identified for the national ceremony, one as the official Thanksgiving turkey and one backup (both receive the pardon). Here is a list of all the very thankful turkeys pardoned on Thanksgiving by U.S. presidents.