"Rhode Island poultry dealer Horace Vose sends a 36-pound turkey to President Ulysses S. Grant, starting an annual tradition. There's no lifesaving intervention, however: It seems to have ended up on people's dinner plates. 1947 Harry Truman Receives a Live Turkey The National Turkey Federation, which still supplies the White House birds today, sends its first turkey to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue-where it's killed and eaten."
"The modern turkey ritual is born when Kennedy receives his bird at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. "Let's keep him going," the President says, sparing its life. Just three days later, Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. After Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter sent their turkeys to petting zoos, Reagan also spares the White House bird. At the ceremony, he jokes about pardoning it, introducing that concept to the culture."
A White House turkey being spared first occurred in 1863 when Tad Lincoln convinced his father to save a bird named Jack. Donated Thanksgiving turkeys began arriving at the White House in 1873, with many later eaten. The National Turkey Federation sent its first White House turkey in 1947. Presidents displayed and interacted with donated birds through the mid-20th century. The modern ceremonial pardon emerged in the 1960s and was popularized by later presidents who framed sparing the turkey as a symbolic, public ritual.
Read at Washingtonian - The website that Washington lives by.
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