From that point forward, every American president has ceremoniously “pardoned” turkeys during the November holiday season.

This tradition—which paints turkeys as unwitting convicts seeking clemency—deserves a little examination. How did it arise? And what in the world do turkeys need pardoning for, anyhow?

For starters (and for profit), animal agriculture has increasingly confined these respectable birds—who evolved over countless generations in forests and grasslands—to live short, miserable lives in dreary, crowded warehouses. It has taken a bird known to rear her young in cooperation with other hens and systematically overbred her to reach such an enormous size that she can no longer mate naturally. Seeking to breed the biggest birds to demonstrate the bounty of the American experiment, the nation inflicts enormous suffering on nearly 223 million turkeys every year—and about 68 million for the November and December holiday season alone.

Obviously, these facts don’t make for the best small talk around the holiday table. Most of us, through the years, have been told stories (the Pilgrims ate turkey with the native Wampanoag people at their first communal celebration) and seen images (cartoon turkeys with Pilgrim hats) that mythologize the connection between the turkey and the American harvest feast. Good marketing requires adding layer upon layer to that mythology. Enter the National Turkey Federation.

Founded in 1940 to lobby on behalf of turkey farmers (and, ultimately, to encourage Americans to eat as much turkey as possible), the NTF began the photo-op tradition of presenting a prize turkey to the President of the United States in 1947. President Truman affably accepted the bird as a gift. Since then, every president has been teamed up with an anxious turkey to stand for such a photo (Jimmy Carter being a noted exception—First Lady Rosalynn Carter and her daughter Amy were presented with the turkey instead).

A quick survey of these images reveals the intended effect: It interrupts White House formality by giving the President hands-on exposure to a relatively untamed farm animal, generates a moment that both humanizes the President and ties a living symbol of American agricultural interests to the head of the nation’s table, and endorses turkey as the centerpiece of the holiday season. The pardon is not the point.

In 1963, when the NTF turkey was presented to President Kennedy—adorned with a handwritten sign that said, “Good eating, Mr. President!”—Kennedy opted to grant the bird relief. “Let’s just keep him,” he said. Subsequent NTF turkeys have been spared immediate death—sent to live out their days on farms, in petting zoos, or most recently, at nearby universities with poultry-science programs. (To the best of our knowledge, no turkey has ever been sent to a Sanctuary.) Only in 1989—the year after Reagan’s offhand comment—did President George H.W. Bush initiate the “formal” pardon process, stating, “He will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy. He’s granted a presidential pardon as of right now.”

Despite the NTF promotional event’s potential for shenanigans—with all of its fowl dad jokes and poultry promotion—it does force us to reckon with, if only momentarily, our actual capacity for mercy. In that moment in the Rose Garden, mercy is culturally significant: We see one of the most powerful people on the planet consciously choosing to spare one innocent animal.

And we can also see (if we don’t avert our eyes), that we have the same capacity: that we can choose to make the same decision, for one innocent animal.

This year, if you want to make a real difference in the life of a turkey, the simplest decision is the same one encouraged by President Bush’s first pardon: Don’t put one on your dinner table. Try something new—whether you sample a vegan roast, or simplify and celebrate the joy of unbridled sides like this Wild Mushroom Stuffing.

Beyond that, explore options like Farm Sanctuary’s long-running Adopt a Turkey Project, which allows people to sponsor and symbolically adopt a rescued turkey at one of our Sanctuary locations. We’ll send you a certificate celebrating your adopted “spokesturkey” to give as a gift to a turkey lover in your life or to display on your holiday table.

Consider a small act of mercy, and a display of respect, for one innocent bird.