ONE LUCKY TURKEY WILL WIN HIS RIGHT TO LIVE

Every Thanksgiving season, the U.S. president as part of their “duties” as head of state partakes in a tradition where upon being presented with a live turkey, publicly pardons the turkey and forbids the turkey from being served as a Thanksgiving dinner.

Surprisingly, the tradition is a rather new phenomenon, starting somewhere around the Lincoln administration and taking a giant leap during the Reagan administration more than a century later. Like many lasting traditions, it has evolved bit-by-bit over time. The modern origin of the turkey pardoning differs from the traces of what led to the tradition originally.

The earliest traces of the turkey pardon appeared under Abraham Lincoln. Supposedly in 1863, President Lincoln had granted clemency for a turkey, which was recorded by White House news reporter Noah Brooks. Since then, citizens began sending turkeys to the president annually as gifts. For example, during the Coolidge Administration, the first lady received a turkey from a Girl Scout in Vermont.

Turkeys by then had become a symbol of cheer during the Thanksgiving period. Still, it seems as though the presidents did dine on the turkeys presented to them. Dwight Eisenhower was the last president known to have eaten the turkeys presented to him, during the 1950s.

While the foundations of the pardon can be traced back to Lincoln, the modern context dates to John F. Kennedy’s administration. JFK, who followed Eisenhower, was the first president tonot eat turkey as part of the ceremony, as well as to use the term “pardon,” though it wasn’t an official action but a phrase made in passing. It was Ronald Reagan in the 1980s who became the first president to officially pardon a turkey on paper and to make turkey pardoning an annual event.

Unofficially, turkeys that were pardoned after the Kennedy era were not allowed to be eaten, until the George H.W. Bush administration in 1989, where it was first made an official policy to not eat the turkeys. Bush formally said the designated turkey was to be spared from dinner with the words, “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 granted a presidential pardon as of right now, and (we will) allow him to live out his days on a children’s farm not far from here.”

Since then, the president of the United States has pardoned a turkey each Thanksgiving time.

Today the tradition of turkey pardoning is about as official, and organized, as can be. The turkey selection process begins with picking a normal turkey from a flock of 50, and of 80 birds. Two finalists are selected and are given names from suggestions given by children from the state where each was raised.

The actual tradition of naming birds started during the Reagan administration, with the first named turkey being “Charlie.” By 2019, at the time this story was written, President Trump had pardoned two turkeys, named “Drumstick” and “Peas.” 

 Later this month Trump will have pardoned the third turkey of his first term, with perhaps a fourth still to come.