Founding Father George Washington has the distinction of being the first president to spend Thanksgiving with his troops, but not in the way we might expect. It was also before he was actually president. During the Revolutionary War, then General Washington called for a day of “thanksgiving” after some of the victorious battles.
That included a special service after the victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777.
As president in 1789, Washington proclaimed a national day of “thanksgiving,” setting it for November 26.
Although that fell around the time of our current holiday, it wasn’t until about 75 years later, in 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln renewed the celebration at the height of the American Civil War. He set the day for the final Thursday of November. It was only in 1942 that Congress passed a resolution clarifying that the fourth Thursday of November would be Thanksgiving Day.
TheSes Presidents Traveled to the Troops
The first president to actually eat with the troops in the modern era was George H.W. Bush, who served Thanksgiving dinner to the U.S. military personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1990 ahead of the Gulf War. His son, President George W. Bush, carried on the family tradition by making a surprise visit to Baghdad in 2003 during the Iraq War. He served dinner to the troops in the Bob Hope Dining Facility.
The younger Bush had previously prayed with U.S. military personnel before sharing a Thanksgiving dinner at Fort Campbell, KY, in 2001.
The 2003 trip involved significant secrecy. The flight path and timing were carefully managed to avoid detection. Even his parents were surprised by the news, as they expected him at the Thanksgiving dinner table at his ranch in Crawford, TX. When Bush arrived as the “special guest,” he was met with cheers, who almost certainly didn’t expect to see the commander-in-chief ready to work the chow line.
“I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere,” President Bush joked after an 11-hour overseas flight to the Baghdad International Airport. “Thanks for inviting me to dinner.”
During his first term, President Donald Trump also traveled halfway around the world to share a Thanksgiving meal with the troops at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan in 2019. It involved a 16-hour round-trip flight, with an additional 3 hours on the ground at the base north of Kabul.
As with Bush’s trip 16 years earlier, it was carried out in extreme secrecy. President Trump had flown to Florida earlier in the week and played golf on Wednesday morning before traveling to an undisclosed airport, and then on to Joint Base Andrews, VA, where a second Air Force One was waiting – while the other was left in Florida to conceal that the president was no longer at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
White House officials and reporters traveling with the president were stripped of their cell phones and other electronic devices before takeoff, and the press pool was only authorized to report on the visit minutes before Air Force One began the return trip to Florida
It was the second such secretive trip made by Trump, who had previously flown to Iraq for a Christmas Eve visit with the troops a year earlier. News of that had been leaked after eagle-eyed aviation watchers spotted the aircraft over the UK, and extreme measures were taken to ensure few knew of Trump’s Thanksgiving plans!
Other Meet and Greets
On multiple occasions on Thanksgiving Day, President Barack Obama took time to call deployed service members to thank them for their service.
In December 2010, just after Thanksgiving, Obama traveled to Bagram Air Field, where he met with troops and awarded five wounded service members the Purple Heart. President Obama made a similar unannounced trip to the Middle East in May 2014.
During the Biden administration, the president didn’t make any secret flights. Instead, President Joe Biden and the First Lady served an early Thanksgiving dinner, dubbed “Friendsgiving,” to military families at Fort Bragg, NC, in 2021. The tradition continued at Fort Bragg in 2022 and then at Naval Station Norfolk, VA, in 2023. Last year, the Bidens served meals to military families at another event in Staten Island, NY.
