President Joe Biden kicked off his final holiday season at the White House on Monday by issuing the traditional reprieve to two turkeys who will bypass the Thanksgiving table to live out their days in southern Minnesota.
Biden welcomed 2,500 guests to the South Lawn under sunny skies as he cracked jokes about the fates of “Peach” and “Blossom” and sounded wistful tones about the last weeks of his presidency after a half-century in Washington power circles.
“It’s been the honor of my life. I’m forever grateful,” Biden said, taking note of his impending departure on January 20, 2025. That's when power will transfer to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the man Biden defeated four years ago and was battling again until he was pressured to bow out of the race amid concerns about his age and viability. Biden is 82.
Until Inauguration Day, the president and first lady Jill Biden will continue a busy run of festivities that will double as their long goodbye. The White House schedule in December is replete with holiday parties for various constituencies, from West Wing staff to members of Congress and the White House press corps.
Turkey talk
Biden relished the brief ceremony with the pardoned turkeys, named for the official flower of the president's home state of Delaware.
“The peach pie in my state is one of my favorites,” he said during remarks that were occasionally interrupted by Peach gobbling atop the table to Biden's right. “Peach is making a last-minute plea,” Biden said at one point, drawing laughter from an overflow crowd that included Cabinet members, White House staff and their families, and students from 4H programs and Future Farmers of America chapters.
Biden introduced Peach as a bird who “lives by the motto, ‘Keep calm and gobble on.’ ” Blossom, the president said, has a different motto: “No fowl play. Just Minnesota nice.”
Peach and Blossom came from the farm of John Zimmerman, near the southern Minnesota city of Northfield. Zimmerman, who has raised about 4 million turkeys, is president of the National Turkey Federation, the group that has gifted U.S. presidents Thanksgiving turkeys since the Truman administration after World War II. President Harry Truman, however, preferred to eat the birds. Official pardon ceremonies did not become an annual White House tradition until the administration of President George H.W. Bush in 1989.
Separately Monday, first lady Jill Biden received the official White House Christmas tree that will be decorated and put on display in the Blue Room. The 18.5-foot (5.64-meter) Fraser fir came from a farm in an area of western North Carolina that recently was devastated by Hurricane Helene.
Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm lost thousands of trees in the storm “but this one remained standing and they named it ‘Tremendous’ for the extraordinary hope that it represents,” Jill Biden said at the event.
The Bidens were also traveling to New York City on Monday for an evening “Friendsgiving” event at a Coast Guard station on Staten Island.
Biden began his valedictory calendar Friday night with a gala for hundreds of his friends, supporters and staff members who gathered in a pavilion erected on the South Lawn, with a view out to the Lincoln Memorial.
Cabinet secretaries, Democratic donors and his longest-serving staff members came together to hear from the president and pay tribute, with no evidence that Biden was effectively forced from the Democratic ticket this summer and watched Vice President Kamala Harris suffer defeat on November 5.
Even as the first couple avoided the context surrounding the president's coming exit, those political realities were nonetheless apparent, as younger Democrats like Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Biden's Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg not only raised their glasses to the president but held forth with many attendees who could remain in the party's power circles in the 2028 election cycle and beyond.
