What’s the Presidential Turkey Pardon?
The Presidential Turkey Pardon is certainly one of America’s strangest and confusing holiday traditions. Presidents being photographed alongside their Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey dinners was not a rare sight since the birth of these holidays in the United States, however, the odd relationship between turkeys and the president first occurred during Abraham Lincoln's presidency. This story is largely speculatory, but it is said that one of Lincoln’s sons grew close with a turkey whose fate had been destined for the dinner table. His son, Tad, was even rumored to take the turkey on walks with a leash and had named him “Jack.” The bond noted by Lincoln, alongside his son’s pleas to have Jack’s life spared, caused Lincoln to allow the bird to have the chance to die of natural causes.
Throughout the 1870s into the early 1910s, a Rhode Island farm had decided to take it upon themselves to start sending the president a turkey for Thanksgiving in order to increase publicity and gain some ground with the executive branch. This ended with the dealer, Horace Vose, passing away and leaving a vacuum in the market of presidential turkey disbursement. Certain groups even would decorate the boxes in which the turkeys were shipped in, and the Harding Girls Club dressed up a presidential turkey as an aviator, equipped with goggles and all. Through this act done by Vose, the presidential turkey became a national phenomenon and continued to evolve in presentation and purpose.
Harry Truman is often credited as being the first president to initiate a turkey pardon, but this is not so. Rather, Truman began a tradition in which presidents would take photographs with their Thanksgiving turkeys due to national outrage from the poultry industry after the government tried to promote a “poultry-less Thursday,” which the population responded negatively to.
The first president to deny a turkey sent to him was John F. Kennedy—three days before his assisination. Though not an official pardoning, Kennedy faced his destined turkey on live television during the turkey ceremony; the turkey wore a sign around its neck that read “Good Eating, Mr. President!” His response to this presentation was to remark that he would “let this one grow,” and that it would be, “...our Thanksgiving present to him.” The turkey was then sent to a farm to live out the rest of its life. This sparked a series of publicly-accepted turkeys that were then sent to farms after the ceremony.
George H.W. Bush was the first president to actually formally pardon a turkey. This act was done in response to animal rights activists holding a rally outside the White House in 1989 during his turkey ceremony. As he stood before the public, he made a choice to proclaim to the public: “He’s [the turkey] granted a presidential pardon as of now.”
In the modern day, presidents still perform this turkey pardoning, traditionally pardoning two turkeys during the lead-up to Thanksgiving. In 2021, Biden pardoned his first turkeys, who were named Peanut Butter and Jelly.
At the surface, this tradition might seem harmless, and it generally is just in good fun, but there is something slightly dystopian about animals being presented in front of a human group’s leader, not knowing they will be actively deciding who gets to live out the rest of their lives. The turkeys who are pardoned must return to the farm thinking that was a neat vacation, not even knowing they just narrowly escaped a public declaration of their execution.