by Guy Jacobson and Greg Pliska
Answer: THEY USE GEORGE WASHINGTON'S CARVER
Answers Used
  • CHEVINGTON CHEESE
  • MOTHER POPCORN
  • STAY PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN
  • TATER DU LIGHTHOUSE
  • UNEEDA BISCUITS
  • KATIE BAR THE DOOR
  • MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU
  • PROFILES IN COURAGE
  • SHINZO ABE
  • SHOOTING STARS

The “yearly tradition” here is the annual pardoning of a turkey by the U.S. President just before Thanksgiving. Each of the answers contains the name of one of the turkeys so pardoned (yes, they do have names!). Arranging the answers in chronological order by year of pardoning, we get:

YearAnswer/Turkey
2002KATIE BAR THE DOOR
2003SHOOTING STARS
2004UNEEDA BISCUITS
2005STAY PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN
2007MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU
2009PROFILES IN COURAGE
2013MOTHER POPCORN
2014CHEVINGTON CHEESE
2015SHINZO ABE
2016TATER DU LIGHTHOUSE

Solvers need to identify the presidents at the bottom; these are used to index into the 10 answers by their president number (so for example, Thomas Jefferson in the first column indicates the third letter in answer one, T, since he was the third president). Extracting letters in this fashion for all 30 images yields:

T H E Y U S E G E O
R G E W A S H I N G
T O N S C A R V E R

This gives the meta solution THEY USE GEORGE WASHINGTON'S CARVER.