Photo courtesy of themelorsefamily.com
The Easter Bunny, the Groundhog, the nine reindeer, and many other animals represent holidays across the world. But there is one celebration animal that stands above the rest in American culture: the turkey. Almost appointed as the national bird by Benjamin Franklin, the turkey is both a staple of Thanksgiving culture and iconic bird of the fall season. Every fourth Thursday of November, roughly 46 million turkeys are roasted, fried, or smoked across the United States. Yet behind this familiar tradition lies a lesser-known history that raises one question: how did turkey become the face of Thanksgiving?
When asked about the origins of eating turkeys, Devin Lim ’28 guesses, “I don’t know actually, it must have been some weird Pilgrim tradition we just picked up.”
The popular image of the 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth often features a roasted turkey, which has been used as a visual reference for the origin of turkey at Thanksgiving. However, historical records do not definitively support this conclusion. The best-known account of the first Thanksgiving dinner was written by Edward Winslow, who mentions that the colonists sent men out “fowling” and that the Wampanoag guests brought five deer. While wild turkeys did roam the Plymouth area, as mentioned in colonist William Bradford’s journal, Plymouth Plantation, no documents from the time directly confirm their presence at the dinner.
Turkeys began to gain particular prominence in the late nineteenth century. Influential magazine editor of Ladies’ Magazine Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for decades to make Thanksgiving a national holiday in an effort to foster national unity and peace as the Civil War intensified. She promoted idealized descriptions of Thanksgiving dinner, starring a turkey front and center. In 1863, President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.
By Jeannie Augusta Brownscombe
Practicality also played a role in why turkey received the honor of being our Thanksgiving symbol. Since turkeys are native to North America, they are not only an American symbol, but also convenient to purchase or hunt. In fact, in the 1930s, wild turkeys almost faced extinction.
Due to aggressive agricultural expansion and year-round hunting, the turkey population plummeted to a low of 30,000 birds. As a result, they disappeared in about 20 states. The 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act placed an excise tax on ammunition and firearms, allowing the turkey population to recover.
Over time, the turkey became a stage for family and national ritual. One notable custom is the wishbone tradition, in which two people pull the bone apart from the turkey, and the one with the larger piece earns a wish. Ella Gvodas ’28 reflects that Thanksgiving lets her “spend time with [her] family.” Another prominent ritual is the presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey. Since the late twentieth century, the president has officially “pardoned” a turkey each year in a lighthearted White House ceremony, sparing one lucky bird from the dinner table.
To conclude, the turkey serves as a cornerstone of American culture. It is the face of a day when families across the country reflect on what they are grateful for and recognize the nuances in our lives that shape us each year. Turkey serves as a symbol of Thanksgiving and communal celebration, shaped by literature and historical precedent, illustrating the rise of a bird once hunted nearly to extinction into the head of a holiday.
