The history of one of Washington’s weirdest traditions: the turkey pardon

A lame-duck president will “pardon” a turkey Monday.

Not to be snood-y about it, but this fowl tradition has a long and oft-confused history. So let’s dispel the myths that get stuck in our beaks that too many have clawed onto and get to the truth of the matter.

Even presidents have gotten it wrong

Which president was the first to pardon a turkey? This might be a shaggy turkey story, but bear with us.

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

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

Eh. Sort of, but not when it comes to pardoning turkeys.

“So continuing a tradition begun 50 years ago by President Truman, I am going to keep at least — excuse me — one turkey off of the Thanksgiving dinner table by giving a pardon to a turkey from Ohio,” said former President Bill Clinton in 1996.

That’s definitely 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 weigh in.

“The Library’s staff has found no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, or other contemporary records in our holdings which refer to Truman pardoning a turkey that 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 destined for the family dinner table.”

Truman was the first to be given a turkey by the National Turkey Federation, but not the first to pardon one

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

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

And that was the original intent – a gift for the presidential holiday table… and for Big Turkey to get attention and remind people to eat turkey for Thanksgiving, of course.

There’s a story that suggests Abraham Lincoln was the first to let a turkey go because his son took a liking to it, but the White House Historical Association says that story is “likely apocryphal.”

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

The first documented reprieve of a turkey during a turkey presentation from the Turkey Federation was in 1963.

A sign hung around a turkey’s neck that read, “Good eating, Mr. President.”

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

The L.A. 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 relation to a turkey?

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

It was during the Iran-Contra crisis, and ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson yelled a question about whether Reagan would pardon Oliver North and John Poindexter, who were involved in the arms swap. Reagan deflected, saying, “If they’d given me a different answer on Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him.”

The turkey pardon became an officially sanctioned White House event by George H.W. Bush

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

“[L]et me assure you and this fine tom turkey,” he said, “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.”

And a White House tradition was born.