Modern First Ladies Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, Rosalynn Carter, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama all introduced innovations to White House holiday traditions.
The era immediately following the end of World War II changed the celebration of Christmas in the United States forever. While much of the sentimental songs of longing and separation caused by the war remained standards, such as “White Christmas,” the postwar economic flush sparked an unheralded consumerism which made the business of Christmas boom. And the increasingly lavish decorations and new customs introduced by First Ladies also reflected that change as the 20th century progressed into the 21st.
The tinseled East Room tree under Eisenhower.
Another factor shifted the role of First Ladies on the national scene during the holiday season. Whereas the previous generation had involved themselves with local charities and organizations by stepping out into the public sphere to share the holiday, after the years of Eleanor Roosevelt’s active visibility there was a greater public expectation from presidential spouses to expand their accessibility, and make the holiday White House more accessible, both in person and through the media, a feat accomplished by the growing visual mediums of newsreels, television and live video feeds.
Mamie Eisenhower loved every holiday, from Halloween to St. Patrick’s Day, from Independence Day to Valentine’s Day.
Christmas, however, was a whole galaxy unto itself for her.
In 1958, she not only had a large tree set up in the family quarters but a count of thirty others on the state floor and at the North Portico entrance. While none of the popular synthetic silver trees were ever spotted, she had the real ones doused in enough silver tinsel to seem like it.
The Eisenhower family in the West Sitting Hall in front of the family’s tree.
And just to make sure that every person, be it tourist or guest, who entered the house immediately caught the spirit of the holiday season, Mrs. Eisenhower employed the new gadgetry of stereophonic projection, having a loop of pre-recorded Christmas carols piped in through a modern sound system.
(It was the same one she used in the spring when she had the sound of chirping bird broadcasted through the house).
With grandson and daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eisenhower had columns wrapped in garland.
The multitude of trees and the recorded carols were the least of it. Mrs. Eisenhower also had nearby hobby shops raided for miles of large-bulbed colored lights, fake evergreen garlands, glass and plastic baubles and ornaments, and bright red ribbons and bows.
All of it was worked into wreaths for the windows, in which an electric candles stood in the center of each.
In the house, the gardening staff had their hands full spray-painting tree branches winter white, which were them placed around the white columns of the house, which were also wound with the garlands.
Red bows were tied around the large free-standing candelabras and mistletoe hung from the crystal chandeliers.
For a final touch, she had the windows sprayed with a white substance to simulate snow drifts. It was an eye-popping Fabulous Fifties Winter Wonderland to be sure.
Unfortunately no color images of Mamie’s White House Christmases have yet surfaced.
Mamie Eisenhower at Christmas.
And this First Lady, although personally managing the household budget to the penny, was not tightwad when it came to spreading the annual goodwill. “It’s been my desire, all my life, to be able to give a Christmas gift to everybody who works for me!”
Each year, every White House staff employee, from butlers to maids to electricians to gardeners to cooks and bakers was invited up to the family quarters where she eagerly handed them each a personal gift.
The staff was given to nicknaming her “Mrs. Christmas,” the former Chief Usher later chuckled, also recalling her coming into his office when the radio was on and tapping her toe and snapping her fingers to the then-new song, “Jingle Bell Rock.”
Mamie Eisenhower’s personal Christmas card.
Her generosity, however, extended beyond those she knew or would ever meet. Receiving hundreds of letters from parents unable to purchase toys for their children asking if there was some charity or place that could help them to provide one, Mrs. Eisenhower directed that hundreds of gifts sent to her four grandchildren be quietly sent to those in need.
Mamie Eisenhower so loved Christmas that she even had a series of her own personal cards made with herself as a caricature, and another with her and the President, both crafted by artists who worked for her friend Joyce Hallmark of the famous card company.
As Mamie did, so did Jackie.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s original watercolors were reprinted as Christmas cards.
Jacqueline Kennedy designed three different Christmas cards during her tenure as First Lady.
Two were printed from her own original watercolored pen sketch paintings, one titled Gift of the Magi, of the three Kings, the other being of a Good Tidings, of a trumpeting angel.
Both were printed onto thousands of boxes of Christmas cards which were then sold to the general public in a limited edition, as a means of raising funds for the National Cultural Center, later to be named in her late husband’s honor as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Mrs. Kennedy sent out a personal card of her driving a one-horse sleigh across the South Lawn.
Jacqueline Kennedy had a third Christmas card made but she didn’t design it – she was depicted in it.
As the personal card she had sent out, she used a black and white picture of herself driving her children in a one-horse sleigh across the snow-covered South Lawn.
Jacqueline Kennedy went further in giving a theme to the White House Christmas tree which, by then, had become traditionally placed in the center of the large, oval Blue Room.
The Kennedys in front of the Nutcracker Suite tree.
Reflecting her love of ballet, she chose the subject of “The Nutcracker Suite,” and had the tree’s branches laden with ornaments modeled after its costumed characters.
In 1961, she also borrowed a magnificent antique nativity crèche, a rare depiction of religious imagery in a government building, showing the nativity scene of Christ’s birth. birth of Christ.
Jacqueline Kennedy hands out lollipops at Junior Village.
Mrs. Kennedy ensured the involvement of children in her holiday activities. She not only initiated a holiday party for children of the diplomatic corps who came in colorful clothes of their native lands, but also sponsored a party for disadvantaged local children over which the Attorney General’s wife, Ethel Kennedy, presided.
Jacqueline Kennedy also visited the local Junior Village, a permanent home for children who had been abandoned or orphaned, and then went to Children’s Hospital distributing gifts to youngsters being hospitalized during the holidays.
Pat Nixon especially focused on making the White House interesting for the long lines of tourists who patiently waited on line in the long, ground floor corridor to see the house during the holiday season. It was part of her overall effort to make the historic mansion as accessible and enjoyable as possible for the average visitor.
Pat Nixon helped the staff decorate the White House during the holidays.
She placed historical objects from previous presidential Christmases displayed in glass cases along the wall of the building, and had snowmen built on the lawn which could be seen through the facing wall of windows.
This First Lady literally helped decorate the vast rooms and halls of the state floor of the White House herself, working with her daughter Julie and electricians and handymen, to ascend ladders and literally deck the entrance hall with holly.
Pat Nixon and daughter Julie inspect the first of the White House Gingerbread houses.
There, she started a new White House holiday tradition, having a gingerbread house created by the White House bakers displayed for close view, placed in the State Dining Room. During her tenure it was a simple ski chalet, modest in comparison to the more elaborate ones to come.
To permit as many people as possible in to see the decorations, the First Lady initiated what were called “Candlelight Tours,” the first time that tourists were permitted into the White House during the evening hours, with many of the candles lit and the electric lights turned down low, giving a unique ambience to the mansion which enhanced the feeling of the holidays.
Visitors on Pat Nixon’s first candlelight tour, 1970.
She further enhanced this by asking the Marine Band to continuously play Christmas music until the last visitor had left that night.
Mrs. Nixon offered an added innovation to the White House Christmas parties for disadvantaged children begun by Jackie Kennedy and continued by First Daughter Luci Johnson; this First Lady hosted the parties on the Sequoia, the presidential yacht.
Pat Nixon at the 1972 holiday preview.
She further hosted a school group which evoked an especially poignant moment for her. Making good on her initial extension of an invitation to the White House, she welcomed sixty Los Angeles Junior School for the Blind students, their trip unwritten by donors, guiding them through the holiday-decorated mansion, describing what they could not see.
She recalled an especially poignant moment, their singing for her again the inspiring song Climb Every Mountain, from the movie Sound of Music, the song they had sung when she had first heard them perform.
Certainly. the most extraordinary White House Christmas party in history was the one hosted by Rosalynn Carter in 1980.
Peggy Fleming skating at the ice rink built on the South Lawn for Rosalynn Carter’s 1980 outdoor Christmas party.
By holding the party on the South Lawn rather than in the state rooms, she permitted a far larger number of guests to attend and she kept them entertained and warm with some novel entertainment.
An entire ice skating ring was built and the legendary skater Peggy Fleming performed, certainly a first for the White House.
Rosalynn Carter at the 1980 Christmas Tree.
Mrs. Carter also had booths with hot chocolate available, a petting zoo with live reindeer, snowmen in various sizes and guised as different contemporary personalities, and a snow-making machine shed white flakes on the delighted crowds
For their first three years in the White House, the Carters kept up their tradition of spending Christmas morning with the President’s family and then going to the First Lady’s mother’s home to share their holiday dinner with her and the First Lady’s siblings. Her last Christmas, however, was the most bittersweet for Rosalynn Carter and she wanted to spend the holiday at Camp David.
The President, Mrs. Carter, daughter Amy and Peggy Fleming with a snowman at the outdoor party.
A month earlier, the President had lost his bid for re-election, and American hostages continued to be held by Iran, a fact memorialized by the decision to permit the National Christmas Tree to be lit for only 419 minutes, the number of days since they had been held as prisoners.
Mrs. Carter was only to spend the holiday with her husband and daughter, but at the suggestion of Amy Carter, members of the White House staff were invited to join them at Camp David, an especial treat since it was the first time most of them had ever been able to see the private presidential retreat.
Barbara Bush also preferred spending Christmas at Camp David, since it permitted the Secret Service agents who protected her and the President to spend the holiday with their families in Washington, and since the many guest cabins there offered enough room for all five of her adult children and all of her grandchildren to stay overnight there.
There were more than enough winter activities for the whole family there, and the First Lady joined in them – although one year she broke her leg after tumbling from a sled ride down a steep snowy hill.
Barbara Bush placing the star atop the National Christmas Tree.
Mrs. Bush also continued on for her four years as First Lady a custom she had begun as the Vice President’s wife from 1981 to 1988, of stepping into a fire engine cage and being raised in it to place the star atop the National Christmas Tree.
Long a supporter of the charitable Salvation Army, she was alarmed when she learned that local area department stores had banned the bell-ringing volunteers of the group, in their signature blue coats, from urging shoppers to toss some coins into their small red kettles.
Barbara Bush joined by the former President ringing a Salvation Army Bell for donations in her post-White House years.
The First Lady had herself driven in a White House car to a local mall, stepped out of the car and donated some money, a move captured and publicized by the White House. It had the effect of reversing the ban. In the White House, she also hosted a special children’s party for those from families who were homeless during the holiday season.
This First Lady continued the custom of having a unique Gingerbread House crafted each year, perhaps the most unique one being a Candy Castle, made entirely of candy and dubbed “the Land of Sweets.” And, without intending to do so, Barbara Bush may have also accidentally begun another welcome holiday tradition in the White House.
Barbara Bush with her dog Millie looks over the Blue Room tree.
Rarely making a public appearance or granting an interview anywhere in the White House with the company of her beloved spaniel Millie, as she did when coming to preview the Blue Room tree in 1990.
From then on, whatever pet was reigning during any Administration, they would be making at least one public appearance during the holiday season.
Socks the Cat during a White House Christmas.
Hillary Clinton continued this custom, permitting not just the family’s dog Buddy, from their last years in the White House, but Socks the Cat, to be photographed around the holiday-decorated house.
The Gingerbread House tradition also got more personal under Hillary Clinton’s tenure, the pastry chef crafting edible versions of both her childhood home in Park Ridge, Illinois and that of the President, in Hope, Arkansas.
Hillary Clinton looks into the Gingerbread House modeled after her childhood home.
Despite being best remembered for her policy involvement as First Lady, Mrs. Clinton took an active interest in Christmas at the White House. She invited the celebrity “domestic goddess” Martha Stewart to come film a television special on how the White House prepared for the holidays and the final results.
She even “decorated” herself, whether it was wearing one of the multi-design “Christmas sweaters” which were ubiquitous during the early 1990s or displaying one of her 1996 holiday gifts from the President, a necklace made of colored-glass Christmas lights which flashed on and off, by a hidden battery.
Despite being best remembered for her policy involvement as First Lady, Mrs. Clinton took an active interest in Christmas at the White House.
She invited the celebrity “domestic goddess” Martha Stewart to come film a television special on how the White House prepared for the holidays and the final results.
Hillary Clinton in her Nineties Xmas sweater.
She even “decorated” herself, whether it was wearing one of the multi-design “Christmas sweaters” which were ubiquitous during the early 1990s or displaying one of her 1996 holiday gifts from the President, a necklace made of colored-glass Christmas lights which flashed on and off, by a hidden battery.
During her eight years as First Lady, Hillary Clinton continued the custom of a different theme for the Blue Room Christmas Tree, always using traditional concepts based, for example, on holiday carols and books such as The Twelve Days of Christmas and The Night Before Christmas.
Each year’s ornaments were crafted by the nation’s leading artists and art schools.
The 2012 Obama Gingerbread House featured a reproduction of Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden.
When one year she chose the theme “Angels, We Have Heard On High,” a cloth figurine depicted the classic movie star Mae West, the First Lady was upbraided for this “pornographic ornament” by a disgruntled former government worker seeking to score a political attack.
The current First Lady has continued all of these White House holiday traditions initiated by her predecessors. During her tenure, the artistry of the Gingerbread House has become even more detailed.
Michelle Obama brought along her dog Bo to holiday events outside of the White House as well as those held there.
In 2012, for example, it included a minute reproduction of the White House vegetable garden which was created by Michelle Obama, the individual vegetables being crafted from marzipan candy.
During the holiday season, at events not just in the White House but those held outside at charitable institutions, Michelle Obama was accompanied by Bo, the first of two Portuguese water dogs belonging to the First Family.
Always spending their private holiday in Hawaii, the birth state of the President, Michelle Obama traditionally spent Christmas morning by attending church services at a local military base, followed by a visit to service centers for members of the armed services.
Michelle Obama invited the children of active members of the armed service to help make ornaments and cookies.
She also used the traditional White House holiday party for children as an opportunity to extend her ongoing project of providing support to military families, setting aside an entire day for children with parents who were active members of the armed services to craft ornaments for the White House tree and to help make and decorate holiday cookies.
