The annual presidential turkey pardon has become a November tradition as quintessentially American as the Thanksgiving meal itself. Every year, in the week of Thanksgiving, the President appears alongside one or two live turkeys with goofy names like Butter and Bread or Corn and Cob, and formally saves them from ending up part of a holiday feast.
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But the history of the ceremony is more complicated than some might imagine.
Presidents began holding a photo-op with a turkey every year beginning in 1947. That’s when the National Turkey Federation and Poultry and Egg National Board first presented the National Thanksgiving Turkey to President Harry Truman. But as the Truman Library notes, there is no documentation or proof that Truman pardoned any birds.
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“Truman sometimes indicated to reporters that the turkeys he received were destined for the family dinner table,” his library says.
The modern turkey pardon as an annual tradition began more than 40 years later, during the George H.W. Bush Administration on November 17, 1989, according to the White House.
“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,” Bush Sr. said at the time, sparing the bird named Jerry.
In that moment, Bush formalized something that had been going on irregularly under Presidents around Thanksgiving time for more than a century. As Presidents often found themselves presented with a turkey in November, some discussed eating the birds while others informally vowed to save them.
The first documented instance of a President sparing a turkey during a holiday dinner can be traced back to President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. When Lincoln was presented with a Christmas turkey meant for the dinner feast, his son Tad—who was just eight when he joined father at the White House in 1861—reportedly intervened, having grown attached to the bird, named Jack. Lincoln, who was himself a devoted animal lover himself with several cats in the White House, obliged his son. This was the same year that Lincoln issued a proclamation of Thanksgiving as a national tradition on the last Thursday of November, a plea for unity during the Civil War.
President John F. Kennedy also informally pardoned a turkey in the Rose Garden on November 19, 1963, just three days before he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
“Let’s keep him going,” Kennedy said of the 55-pound bird as it wore a sign around its neck reading “Good eating, Mr. President.” This is viewed as the first modern turkey pardon.
More than two decades later, Ronald Reagan was the first President to use the term “pardon” when sparing the turkey, Charlie, presented to him, though it was meant as a joke.
Reagan at the time was trying to deflect from the Iran-Contra scandal. When reporters asked Reagan during the turkey ceremony if he would pardon Oliver North and John Poindexter, Reagan refused to say, but got a laugh in saying, “If they’d given me a different answer on Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him.”