https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_Presentation
This originates from an annual tradition from the 1940s where the turkey presented by representatives was later killed and eaten. It wasn't until the 70s when they started sparing the turkeys. During Bush Sr's presidency, it became a formal ceremony with a pardon and everything.
It's this big ceremony on TV where named turkeys are brought to the White House to get ceremonial pardons. Some have food-related names like Marshmallow or Drumstick.
Charlie in 1987 trying to finish what John Hinkley Jr. started. He spent the rest of his days at a petting zoo.
The first president on record issuing a "pardon" to his turkey was Ronald Reagan. Reagan had been sending the turkeys presented to him to farms and zoos since at least 1982, and 1987's turkey, Charlie, was likewise headed to a petting zoo. At the time, Reagan was facing questions over the Iran-Contra affair, on whether or not he would consider pardoning Oliver North (who had yet to be tried for his involvement in the affair); Reagan conjured the notion of the turkey pardon as a joke to deflect those questions.
Reagan did not make any pardon references in the 1988 presentation, but his successor, George H. W. Bush, instituted the turkey pardon as a permanent part of the presentation beginning his first year in office, 1989. The phrase "presidential pardon" in that ceremony was apparently inserted by a speechwriter; Bush initially was indifferent to the terminology, saying "'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."
50-80 turkeys are selected based on their behavior from a pool of turkeys up for slaughter. The 10-20 best looking and most behaved turkeys are selected, then two are finally picked and get named by the president.
This year, Jennie-O brand is bringing two currently unnamed turkeys for Biden to pardon.
For those curious about the fates of the turkeys. It's not great. In a fashion that's particularly telling of the US:
For many years the turkeys were sent to Frying Pan Farm Park in Fairfax County, Virginia. From 2005 to 2009, the pardoned turkeys were sent to either the Disneyland Resort in California or the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, where they served as the honorary grand marshals of Disney's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the turkeys were sent to live at Mount Vernon, the estate and home of George Washington; Mount Vernon stopped displaying and accepting the turkeys due to the fact that they violated the estate's policy of maintaining its own historical accuracy (Washington never farmed turkeys)
For many years, the pardoned turkeys were documented to have very short lives after their pardoning, frequently dying within a year of being pardoned; for comparison, heritage turkey breeds have lifespans on par with those of wild turkeys, at least five years.
Emphasis mine:
The lifespans of the pardoned turkeys have steadily improved in recent years, frequently having lifespans of over two years and occasionally reaching three years of age, an improvement attributed to better choices of homes after the pardons; rather than serving solely as tourist attractions, the turkeys are now placed in the care of experts who make conscious efforts to maintain the turkeys' health for as long as possible.
So yeah, in the spirit of aesthetics, the US president puts an animal on TV, promises it life and then leaves it to survive the machinations of an empire in violent decay. All the while the rest of them are condemned to die away from the general.
It just really makes a mockery of so many things the US pretends to care about.
