Merry Christmas from the politics long post man! I bought a grass award and now I'm broke, so I'm "regifiting" something I wrote for thanksgiving! Happy holidays!

The White House is full of cheesy, sweet, mostly useless traditions done for fun. The Family Christmas cards , calling kids on Christmas , and my favourite trick and treating at the White House . But there's none as cheesy as the turkey pardon, where the President is given a turkey and grants it a pardon - so that first turkey goes back to a farm to be killed later, and the President eats a second turkey that's killed earlier. A pretty strange tradition when broken down like that (though what tradition isn't when broken down), it's history is disputed. Most attribute the start of the tradition Harry Truman being sent several turkeys, but I assure you that cheap bastard didn't pardon shit. And besides that, Presidents have been gifted turkeys before then - who started pardoning turkeys? And when did it become a tradition?

The First Turkey Gift

There are rumours that Lincoln was the first man to pardon a turkey, coming from an 1865 report about the President's actions in 1863. There seems to be some truth in the matter, but it was far from a tradition or spectacle - Lincoln's son Tad had grown attached to the bird, so Abe decided to spare it . Additionally, the tradition usually involves pardoning an animal sent to the President - that wasn't a tradition until 1873, when a rather intelligent poultry farmer figured out a trick.

Gifts to the President were nothing new. He's the most powerful man in one of the most powerful nations - if the President says he enjoys something, such as the product or service he had received as a pleasant gift, then you can be sure that will become a fashionable item.

The first noted turkey farmer to figure that out was Horace Vose (pictured above), the "Turkey King of Rhode Island" . Every year, the Turkey King would send a dressed turkey to the President. Cracks showed in Vose's final thanksgiving, when Representative South Trimble also sent President Wilson a turkey, certain that it would be better than the Turkey King's turkey (historical record as to which turkey was better doesn't exist, what a fricking oversight). When Vose passed away that December, offering the President turned into all out war - Warren Harding , for example, was sent turkeys every year - even in 1920 when he was both not President and not in America.

But a grand tradition was established that year. In addition to the turkeys Harding was swarmed with, he and President Wilson were both sent live turkeys from Texas - it's unknown what Harding did with the turkey, but Wilson ate the poor thing. Coolidge , the fun police, briefly stopped the practise because he opposed having wild animals in the White House. Thankfully, he was pressured into restoring the practise, and was sent just a bunch of wild animals as penance that year. One such animal was a raccoon. Rather then eat her, Grace Coolidge adopted her and named her Rebecca. And as you can see, she was just a sweet heart.

So for Roosevelt era, the tradition was that during Thanksgiving, the White House would be swarmed by animals in an attempt to get some national advertising or to show support. Things would change in Truman's day.

The First Presentation

In autumn 1947, Truman and the food administration called for "Poultryless Thursdays", a voluntary measure made to try and save food to give to the Europoors after WW1 Poultry farmers were fricking pissed - that year, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all happened to take place on Thursday, so Truman's woke war on turkeys really fricked them over.

This led to the first public Turkey Presentation, where the turkey magnates made a big show of giving Truman a turkey which did lead to Truman taking Turkey off the "pls don't eat list".

This was the first time that the President being given a turkey was given attention with a show made out of it, and it was a lobbying effort, god bless America. The establishment of this tradition is likely why President Truman is credited with the other tradition, the pardon, but as the Truman library notes - this turkey was not at all spared. The guy was a massive cheapskate, he 100% ate that turkey

Instead, the first turkey spared was in 1963, when President Kennedy declined to have the turkey he was presented with on a whim.

On November the 19th, President Kennedy sarcastically said "We'll just let this one grow" (it was 55 lbs). Why he didn't want to eat this turkey isn't clear - he ate bacon every day and loved oysters, so it's not like he was a vegetarian. And he kind of died 10 days later, so we couldn't exactly ask him why he did this. Some have speculated that it was kind of power play over the more "macho" Lyndon Johnson , but he didn't have a problem with the 1961 or 1962 turkeys. More likely, in my opinion, is that Kenney was just feeling silly. He was prone to just doing silly, whimsical things - it was why the press liked him so much.

So, mystery solved. President Kennedy was the President that established the Turkey Pardon, and he did it for shits and giggles.

The issue with this is that it wasn't repeated for some time. LBJ did not fricking spare a single bird, if the press wasn't present in that photo he'd unhinge his jaw and eat that bird then and there, and Nixon ate a few birds - while he did send some Turkeys to a petting zoo (and the Carters sent every bird to a petting zoo), that wasn't part of the tradition at all. More critically, President Kennedy, Nixon and Carter didn't "pardon" the turkey. He just sent it back home, he didn't use his powers for it. So, when was the first time that a President pardoned a turkey?

The First Pardon

1987, Ronald Wilson Reagan's second to final year. His landslide victory in 1980 and 1984 may suggest that he's a massively popular and unifying president. And perhaps in 1984, he was.

But in truth, the Iran-Contra scandal is boiling Reagan's administration alive. More and more top officials are being exposed as committing high treason, illegally selling guns to Iran to illegally fund right wing counterrevolutionaries the Contras . While being grilled by the press on whether Reagan will pardon Oliver North, a lead architect behind the scheme, the gears in his addled mind turn. It's a difficult question to answer - so he won't answer it. Putting on his movie star grin and giving Charlie the turkey a pet, he smiles, ignores the question, and says he will indeed be pardoning this turkey.

Unlike Kennedy's clemency, Reagan's pardon wasn't spur of the moment. He had only had one turkey, in 1981, and had afterwards sent the birds to petting zoos as well. But this was the first time the idea of a pardon was introduced to a turkey presentation field. That's right, the first example of this silly show was covering up massive corruption at the very top of American power. God bless America!

Like Kennedy, this wasn't the start of a tradition for a reason - Reagan didn't do it again in 1988. Instead, the tradition was started in 1989, during the first Bushs' first year.

"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."

For some reason, the President that oversaw an end to the Cold War didn't have why he pardoned turkeys a lot noted for history. It's like he had no idea what's important. It could be that he wanted to try and legitimise the first pardon, but after Reagan didn't have a pardon ceremony in 1989, that strikes me as unlikely. Bush wasn't exactly a vegetarian, so I can only arrive at the conclusion he thought he thought it was neat.

Or, rather his team thought it was neat. He didn't give a frick either way, saying of the affair "'Reprieve', 'keep him going', or 'pardon': it's all the same for the turkey, as long as he doesn't end up on the president's holiday table."

Nonetheless, it was a cute tradition established and actually followed up on, as Clinton pardoned his turkey - citing the tradition as going back to Lincoln and Truman, which is likely why there's some confusion. Slick Willie, you scamp!

Addendum - what happens to the turkeys after the pardon?

They die.

John Stossel did a report on it. The turkeys are bred to be eaten, not enjoy life. Fed a grain-heavy diet of fortified corn and soybeans to increase their size, what typically happens is that the flesh grows so fast that their bones and organs can't match the overgrown flesh, so they just die.

This isn't unique to the presidential turkeys - this applies to the vast majority of turkeys chosen to be slaughtered. The only difference between the presidential turkeys and normal turkeys is that the presidential turkeys are trained to handle crowds, before dying slowly from their forced mutations.

Yeah I ended the longpost with vegan propaganda. Deal with it cute twinks