Taking comfort in a White House Christmas

White House

One iconic image of a White House Christmas comes from President and Mrs. Kennedy’s 1962 holiday card. The South Lawn scene was captured by their personal photographer, Cecil Stoughton.

WASHINGTON - There were no Christmas trees in Theodore Roosevelt's White House. Speculation was that the president, an ardent environmentalist, would not have it.

But Roosevelt was no Scrooge. At a children's party he hosted in 1903, some 550 young guests upended chairs in their scramble after TR, who had ordered them to march with him from the East Room to the State Dining Room for punch and cookies. "The mob," as White House historian William Seale tells it, "surged toward the hall, following the president's prancing steps."

The White House has known many idyllic Christmas moments. Jackie Kennedy created a picture-perfect memory for the official 1962 holiday card, with a black-and-white rendering of the first lady and her children, Caroline and John, crossing a snowy White House lawn in a sleigh pulled by Caroline's pony, Macaroni.

But President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson would mail the official White House greeting in 1963, a shell-white card embossed with the presidential seal and bordered in black for the just-assassinated John F. Kennedy. Christmas comes even to a White House deep in grief, as it does no matter war, political upheaval or national crisis.

The modern White House Christmas is a tour de force with its own calendar. There is pressure in March to produce a decorating theme - the first lady has the final word on that - and preparations are under way by summer. At 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., White House usher Gary Walters says, Christmas is "not just a December event for us."

Which is why on Sept. 10, 2001, Laura Bush was posed in the Map Room for Family Circle magazine with a sampling of Christmas decorations. A replica made with 80 pounds of gingerbread recreated how the White House - itself thought to have been a Sept. 11 target - looked in 1800, when John Adams moved in.

Christmas 2001 came to a White House distracted by war, as it was in 1941 after the Dec. 7 bombing of Pearl Harbor. While Franklin D. Roosevelt happily watched his grandchildren open their gifts weeks later, a housekeeper found his own presents in a closet - unopened.

This year the first family's White House Christmas cards - 2 million of them - went out the day after Thanksgiving, bearing a Crawford, Texas, postmark. The image is an original oil painting of the Red Room by Lone Star state artist Cindi Holt. In the foreground is a cranberry topiary - a 19-year Red Room tradition that requires four days of exacting work.

The Blue Room has become the heart of a White House Christmas. The children of President William Howard Taft first placed a tree there in 1909, and of the 41 trees in the executive mansion this year, the star of the show stands there. An 18-foot Noble fir, brought to Laura Bush in a horse-drawn wagon by Washington state growers John and Carol Tillman, is now bright with 32,500 lights and laden with 350 musical instruments in keeping with 2004's theme, "A Season of Merriment and Melody."

On Dec. 2, as she showed off the decorated White House, Laura Bush was asked, "Have you decided what you want most for Christmas this year, and what you think the president wants?"

She answered without hesitation: "I want peace, and I hope we have peace in the New Year."