The National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation is a ceremony that takes place at the White House every year shortly before Thanksgiving. The president of the United States is presented with a live domestic turkey by the National Turkey Federation (NTF), usually a male of the Broad Breasted White variety. The early years also included a joint presentation with the Poultry and Egg National Board.

The ceremony dates back to the 1940s; these turkeys were usually slaughtered and eaten, with some exceptions, prior to the 1970s, when it became standard practice to spare the turkey. During the presidency of George H. W. Bush, it became a tradition. All presidents since Bush have issued a ceremonial "pardon" to the turkey, which spares the turkey from being served as Thanksgiving dinner and leads to the turkey being sent to live out its natural life at a park or university. It is a tradition that the turkeys be picked from the chairperson of the NTF's home state, occasionally from the chair's own farm.

The tale of Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son Tad's Christmas turkey in 1863 appears to be apocryphal, as it only appeared in print after Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

Turkeys had been donated to the president as gifts from private citizens since the 1870s. Horace Vose, a Rhode Island turkey farmer, presented a dressed turkey to the president each year from 1873 until his death in 1913. In 1913, South Trimble, a Kentucky farmer and Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, presented a turkey to then-president Woodrow Wilson that year, convinced that his red pepper-fed but smaller turkey tasted better than Vose's; no record survives of which turkey Wilson chose. This, along with Vose's death that December, set off a free-for-all in which numerous farmers tried to be the one to supply the annual holiday turkeys to the president. The rivalry escalated in the Roaring Twenties, with a group of women Warren G. Harding supporters from Chicago sending Harding turkeys (including in 1920 when he was still president-elect and at the Panama Canal Zone; the turkey was delivered by train), while Cuero, Texas, also sent Wilson and Harding turkeys. The Cuero turkeys were notable for being the first to be sent while still alive; the Wilson administration slaughtered and ate the bird. Calvin Coolidge, alarmed at the number of turkeys being offered to the president at the time, briefly stopped the tradition upon assuming office in 1923 and chose to buy his own turkey; he relented in 1925 and was soon bombarded with an unusual array of animals to eat, including Rebecca, a live raccoon that Coolidge received in 1926 and, unwilling to eat it, designated as a White House pet.

The official presentation of a turkey to the president each year began in 1947 under President Harry S. Truman. The presentation was partially born out of a lobbying campaign: the Truman administration, in an effort to conserve grain for foreign aid campaigns, began promoting "Meatless Tuesdays" and "Poultryless Thursdays" in the autumn of 1947. Not only did American citizens quickly grow frustrated with the (voluntary, but strongly encouraged) restrictions and begin disregarding them in short order, the National Poultry and Egg Board, incensed at the attack on their industry, noted that not only was Thanksgiving on a Thursday, but Christmas and New Year's Day also landed on a Thursday that year. A truce was called in the dispute in early November, before the Thanksgiving holiday, but "Eggless Thursdays" continued to be promoted for the rest of the year, meaning that dishes such as pumpkin pie, another Thanksgiving staple, were still on the forbidden foods list. Records on file at the Truman Library show that Truman admitted eating at least some of the turkeys.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library says documents in their collection reveal that President Dwight Eisenhower ate the birds presented to him during his two terms. President John F. Kennedy spontaneously spared a turkey on November 19, 1963, just three days before his assassination. The bird was wearing a sign reading, "Good Eating Mr. President". Kennedy returned the massive 55-pound (25 kg) turkey to the farm, saying "we'll let this one grow." Scattered reports in The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times referred to it as a pardon, but Kennedy did not refer to it as such. Likewise, Richard Nixon also spared some of the turkeys given to him during his time as president. During the Carter administration, First Lady Rosalynn Carter arranged to have the turkeys sent to petting zoos, and no public ceremonies were held.

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 it was also under Reagan when those turkeys began receiving names, including 1984's "R. J." (for "Robust and Juicy"). 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."

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. However, as Washington never farmed turkeys, 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. The 2013, 2014 and 2015 turkeys were sent to Morven Park in Leesburg, Virginia, the estate of former Virginia governor (and prolific turkey farmer) Westmoreland Davis. Virginia Tech has housed the turkeys from 2016 to 2019; Virginia Tech was chosen because of the college's poultry science program, and the National Turkey Federation wanted to begin a tradition of cooperation between the turkey industry and universities. After four successful years at Virginia Tech, the alma mater of the chairman of the NTF at the time, the federation chose to begin housing the turkeys at universities closer to the turkeys' home towns. The 2020 turkeys were sent to be housed at Iowa State University, the 2021 turkeys reside at Purdue University, the 2022 and 2025 turkeys live at North Carolina State University. and the 2023 turkeys are housed at the University of Minnesota. Turkeys pardoned in 2024 were sent to the Minnesota Agricultural Interpretive Center in Waseca, Minnesota.