The national Thanksgiving turkeys, Liberty and Bell, arrive for a pardon ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on November 20, 2023.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

A lame president will ‘pardon’ a turkey on Monday.

Not to bash it, but this chicken tradition has a long and often tangled history. So let’s dispel the myths that linger in our beaks and that too many people have clung to, and get to the truth of the matter.

Even presidents have been wrong

Which president was the first to pardon a turkey? This could be one shaggy turkey storybut be patient.

To paraphrase a former president, this depends on what the definition of “pardon” is.

“This is a tradition that goes back to the presidency of Harry Truman,” then-President George W. Bush said in his speech. 2008.

Um. A little, but not when it counts forgive turkeys.

Then-President George W. Bush petted the turkey during the Thanksgiving turkey pardon on November 20, 2007 in the White House Rose Garden.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

“So continuing a tradition started by President Truman 50 years ago, I’m going to at least—excuse me—keep one turkey off the Thanksgiving dinner table by pardoning an Ohio turkey.” said former President Bill Clinton in 1996.

That is absolutely not true. And he repeated it the next year.

“President Truman was the first president to pardon a turkey,” he said.

Still not true. It got so bad that the Truman Library had to intervene.

“Library staff have found in our possession no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs or other contemporary documents that refer to Truman pardoning a turkey he received as a gift in 1947 or at any other time during his presidency. ” it said in a statement in 2003. “Truman sometimes indicated to reporters that the turkeys he received were for the family dinner table.”

Truman was the first to receive a turkey from the National Turkey Federation, but not the first to pardon it

This is where the confusion comes in. The turkey lobby is gone present presidents with turkeys since 1947, when Truman was president.

But as the Truman Library notes, the post-Depression, post-World War II president ate his turkeys.

And that was the original intention: a gift for the presidential holiday table… and for Big Turkey to draw attention and remind people to eat turkey on Thanksgiving, of course.

There is a story that suggests Abraham Lincoln was the first to let go of a turkey because his son loved it, but the White House Historical Association says that story is this:probably apocryphal.”

So maybe it was Lincoln, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Kennedy?

The first documented postponement of a turkey during a Turkish Federation turkey presentation was in 1963.

Hanging around a turkey’s neck was a sign that read: “Good food, Mr. President.”

So the president was clearly supposed to eat it. But for whatever reason, Kennedy said, “We’re just going to let this one grow.”

The LA times headlined that 1963 event as a ‘presidential pardon.”

But it certainly wasn’t official.

When was the word “pardon” first used by a president in reference to a turkey?

Following Kennedy’s lead, Nixon and Carter sent their turkeys to petting zoos. But the word “pardon” wasn’t used until 1987 by Reagan, when he presented that year’s White House turkey, “Charlie.”

It was during the Iran-Contra crisis and ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson raised questions about whether Reagan would pardon Oliver North and John Poindexter, who were involved in the arms swap. Reagan turned away, proverb“If they had given me a different answer about Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him.”

The turkey pardon became an officially sanctioned event at the White House by George HW Bush

The elderly former President Bush, Reagan’s vice president, formalized the event in 1989.

“Let me assure you and this fine Tom Turkey,” he said, “that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this man – he has now been granted a presidential pardon – and allow him to survive. his days at a petting zoo not far from here.”

And a White House tradition was born.