Free Bird: The History of Presidential Turkey Pardoning

REAGAN-TURKEY-PARDONING

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Each year, a few days before Thanks­giv­ing, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States for­mal­ly par­dons a live turkey pre­sent­ed to him by the Nation­al Turkey Fed­er­a­tion. It's a tra­di­tion that's seem­ing­ly been around for­ev­er, and while the NTF has been sup­ply­ing the White House with hol­i­day birds since the 1940s, the par­don­ing bit is actu­al­ly a pret­ty new devel­op­ment.

HARRY-TRUMAN-TURKEY-PARDONING

A lot of peo­ple point to Harry Tru­man as par­don­ing the first turkey in 1947, but the record keep­ers at the Tru­man Library can't find any "doc­u­ments, speech­es, news­pa­per clip­pings, pho­tographs, or other con­tem­po­rary records" tying Tru­man to the cus­tom. What's more, the first turkey Tru­man sup­pos­ed­ly par­doned wasn't even for Thanks­giv­ing — it was given to him at Christ­mas. The Tru­man fam­i­ly ate it.

Anoth­er ori­gin story says that Abra­ham Lin­coln inter­rupt­ed a Cab­i­net meet­ing in 1863 to grant a turkey named Jack, which his son had befriend­ed, an order of reprieve for "exe­cu­tion" in the kitchen. As with Tru­man, though, there's no doc­u­men­ta­tion sup­port­ing the story, and it may be just anoth­er Lin­coln tall tale.

JFK-TURKEY-PARDONING-GOOD-EATING

The first pres­i­dent after Tru­man to spare a turkey was John F. Kennedy. But JFK did not grant a for­mal "par­don" to the bird pre­sent­ed to him the week before Thanks­giv­ing in 1963. He sim­ply sug­gest­ed the fam­i­ly "just keep him" and announced he would not eat the bird. ("It's our Thanks­giv­ing present to him," Kennedy said.) Accord­ing to a con­tem­po­rary New York Times report, the bird was returned to a farm for breed­ing. Kennedy trag­i­cal­ly didn't live to see Thanks­giv­ing — he was assas­si­nat­ed on Novem­ber 22..............

Free Bird: The History of Presidential Turkey Pardoning
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/107104