What US president did start the tradition of forgiving a turkey for Thanksgiving Day?
929555
Thanksgiving at the White House, 2006\nThis year marks the 59th anniversary of the National Thanksgiving Turkey presentation. Though live Thanksgiving turkeys have been presented intermittently to presidents since the Lincoln administration, the current ceremony dates to 1947, when the first National Thanksgiving Turkey was presented to President Harry Truman.\n\nPresidents traditionally have granted the National Thanksgiving Turkey a "pardon." After the presentation, the National Turkey and its alternate will be taken to Disneyland Resort and Theme Park in Anaheim, California to be a part of the holiday display and where they will stay the remainder of their natural lives. Both the turkeys will serve as honorary Grand Marshals for Disneyland’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade
847305
If we use Norman Rockwell as an authority, turkey is a definite.\n\nSo let's look at the menu...\n\nTurkey\nMashed Potatoes (real, not flakes)\nChestnut stuffing\nFresh green peas\nFresh green beans in mushroom sauce with slivered almonds\nCreamed pearl onions\nAsparagus\nBlack and green olives\nHot biscuits\nCranberry sauce, whole berries, not jellied\nBanana nut bread\nPumpkin pie (with or without vanilla ice cream or whipped cream)\nApple pie (good with a little cheddar cheese on top)\nFruit cup with sorbet (as an appetizer)\n\nWhat is traditional, depends on what is traditional at your house. Some people have duck or goose, some have pork or beef roast. Set your own traditions, cherish them, but leave room for others.
750350
Harry Truman was the first.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nhttp://www.trumanlibrary.org/trivia/turkey.htm
902097
OK I'll bit as you have asked this with different wording but I think I figured it out. If you mean what started Thanksgiving it was by the Indians and the Pilgrims getting together to give thanks and share food. If you mean who was the first President to make it a Holdiay then it would be\nTitle: President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting \n\nWe have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. \nIntoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. \n\n-- April 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. \nsee http://www.sermons.org/thanksgiving2.htm... for the rest.
729756
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks (traditionally to God) at the close of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.\n\nThe first known thanksgiving feast or festival in North America was celebrated by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the people he called "Tejas" (members of the Hasinai group of Caddo-speaking Native Americans) on 23 May 1541 in Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, to celebrate his expedition's discovery of food supplies.[3] In the sense of a feast in gratitude to God celebrated by Europeans in North America, this has a claim to be the true first North American Thanksgiving.\n\nIn the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863:
875691
Ha, I found what I was looking for:\n\n"The use of the turkey in the USA for Thanksgiving relates back to Lincoln's nationalization of the holiday in 1863. Since a turkey could feed more than a chicken, those were sent to the troops instead as a more cost-effective feast."
967134
Thanks giving day  is on  Thursday, November 23, 2006 in the United States this year.  Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday in late November that commemorates the good harvest of the Pilgrims in 1621.
100587
Day after thanksgiving...
941279
Happy Thanksgiving\n\nThe Beatles
841766
There is no religious symbolism but there is a kind of cultural symbolism - cranberries are grown in Massachusetts - where the Pilgrims landed.  Pumpkin is part of the fall harvest in New England. At the first thanksgiving, fowls were served (probably not only turkeys)....so there are a lot of ties today to that first community meal with the Indians and Pilgrims in the 17th century....\n\nsee\n\nhttp://pilgrims.net/plymouth/thanksgiving.htm
929970
Does your family fight over the wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey? Known as a "lucky break" the tradition of tugging on either end of a fowl's bone to win the larger piece and its accompanying "wish" dates back to the Etruscans of 322 B.C. The Romans brought the tradition with them when they conquered England and the English colonists carried the tradition on to America
968440
It is a holiday that began with the first English settlers in America. Their voyage was long and hard, and after they arrived, they nearly starved in the first year. But the second year they had an excellent harvest, and they were thus blessed with a relative bounty of food to eat. They decided to have a party to celebrate 1) their good fortune for a good harvest, 2) the now fairly obvious fact that the colony would be successful, and 3) their faith in God, not necessarily in that order. They invited the local Indians to the celebration and they all had a very good time. Thereafter they decided to repeat the party every year, to mostly celebrate their good harvest. In today's world, it is a family gathering time that is usually free from the commercialism that has grown up around Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, etc. The traditional dish is roast turkey, because it is a large bird that is native to America and was thought to be the main dish at the original celebration. Other traditional foods for Thanksgiving include pumpkin pie and perhaps something made out of corn (maize), something made from sweet potatoes, and something made out of cranberries since these were the newfound foods that are native to the American continent that the early settlers were able to obtain in quantity, and they were largely new and different from what they were used to eating in the British Isles. If you are a new arrival in America, please have a happy Thanksgiving! Perhaps you can also celebrate your own safe travel across the Atlantic to the new world!
556950
First, probably no turkey. That was established by poultry farmers in the early 20th century to sell more turkey. No football - natch......And more than likely, the native Americans invited the pilgrims to feast with them. The first loads of Europeans to arrive here starved and froze to death. They had no idea about the radical climate changes here and knew squat about growing food that would survive on this soil. They were clueless and it was the natives that taught them how to hunt, fish, farm, and survive.
826988
OK I'll bit as you have asked this with different wording but I think I figured it out. If you mean what started Thanksgiving it was by the Indians and the Pilgrims getting together to give thanks and share food. If you mean who was the first President to make it a Holdiay then it would be\nTitle:  President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting \n\n   We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. \n   Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. \n\n   -- April 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. \nsee http://www.sermons.org/thanksgiving2.html  for the rest.
966760
http://www.geocities.com/the_playahata/Playahata__Thanksgiving.html\n\nhttp://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Video_Clips&content_type_id=50493&display_order=5&mini_id=1083
773611
Thanksgiving was a Day for reflection and a day to be thankful for our dedicated troops and Commander in Chief.
713941
The one that comes to mind is "Glad I'm not a Turkey on Thanksgiving Day"!