In addition to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, there is also a famous and interesting holiday tradition in the United States. Every Thanksgiving, the President of the United States must personally pardon a turkey. So, what is the traditional origin of pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving Day? Let's have a look.

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Every year before Thanksgiving, the President of the United States symbolically "pardons" the turkeys sent by the National Turkey Federation to prevent them from being slaughtered by human beings. The pardoned turkeys will be sent to zoos and other places to "support themselves for the rest of their lives", and the average life expectancy of each turkey is about 3 to 4 years. But other turkeys are not so lucky. Americans eat more than 46 million turkeys every year during Thanksgiving.

The traditional ceremony of releasing turkeys can be traced back to the American Civil War when President Lincoln was in power. One day in 1863, Lincoln's son Ted suddenly broke into a cabinet meeting and asked for pardon for a pet turkey named Jack, because the turkey sent to the White House was about to become a Christmas dinner.

The traditional origin of the presidential pardon of turkeys in the United States is quite difficult to verify. There is a saying that the annual presidential ceremony of releasing turkeys began in 1947 when President Truman was in power. In 1947, the American Poultry Committee presented President Truman with two live turkeys, but in fact Truman did not pardon them later, and the two turkeys eventually became the first family's Thanksgiving dinner.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy took the turkey to the event and declared, "Let's let it go". In that year, Washington post used "Amnesty" and "reprieve" to describe turkeys for the first time in an article. What makes the world more certain is that the first president who officially confirmed the White House pardon of turkey as a ceremony was George H.W. Bush. Since 1989, "Amnesty Turkey" has become an annual event.

Conclusion: Every American president used the "pardon turkey" ceremony as an opportunity to wish the American people a holiday. November 19, 1963, John? President Kennedy pioneered the annual "turkey pardon". President Obama even broke the tradition of pardoning only one turkey in the past and pardoned two turkeys to show "benevolence."