Washington Whispers

The First White House Christmas Tree

By Paul Bedard

September 22, 2008 RSS Feed Print

It's that time of year again, and the new White House Historical Association Christmas ornament is ready. This year, it's a beaut. Harking back to the 1889-1893, one-term administration of Benjamin Harrison, the colorful ornament is of a large Christmas tree decorated with roping, candles, and presents. And that's appropriate because Harrison was the first president to display a Christmas tree in the White House. He even gave out staff gifts. Married men received turkeys and single men fine gloves. The assumption was that families ate Christmas dinner at home, while singles had to dress up to go out.

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Icare of AK, I just saw your post with its misspellings and incorrect facts. Name one tree found anywhere in the world that was a thousand feet tall. Also, most natural Christmas trees are grown on tree farms. As with other trees and plants, they contribute to the environment thru scrubbing the air and producing oxygen before they're harvested.

If you really cared for the environment, you'd be concerned with the destruction of the remaining rain forests. But like most radical environmentalists, you protestations are more about socialist politics with it's attendant hatred of Christianity.

Bob of NE of NE 7:01PM September 06, 2010

wwow this is why our enviroment is bad because you people are cutting down chritmas thousands of feet tall! and you dont buy the really tall fake one's!stop cutting chritmas trees!

Icare of AK 2:03PM December 02, 2008

I think the White House should stop cutting down large Christmas trees and get a large artificial Christmas tree. I know they can because i saw 30 foot tall christmas trees on http://www.christmascentral.com Im sure one of those and LED lights is the best way to go green. The White House needs to start leading by example.

Nick of NY 3:40PM September 25, 2008

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