FDR's wartime Christmas serves as beacon in fight against hate
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Stewart D. McLaurin, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is president of the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.
The holiday season at the White House has become a public moment, part of our national traditions. The lighting of the National Christmas Tree is televised. Visitors and dignitaries get to glimpse an Executive Mansion dressed up with glittering lights, garland and rich decorations.
It wasn't always this way.
The first known Christmas party at the White House was a small affair for the granddaughter of President John Adams and first lady Abigail Adams.
Family lore has it that President Andrew Jackson's children staged an indoor "snowball fight" with specially made cotton balls.
First White House Christmas tree to first public lighting of
the National Christmas Tree
The first documented record of a White House Christmas tree didn't come until 1889, when President Benjamin Harrison put up an evergreen in the family quarters.
Decades later, President Calvin Coolidge flipped the switch on the first public lighting of the National Christmas Tree. (The tree displayed in the Blue Room is still brought to the White House in a horse-drawn carriage.)
It wasn't until President Franklin Roosevelt, who spent 10Christmases at the White House, that the holiday season at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue moved toward becoming a bigger and more national event.
A big Christmas Eve party was thrown for White House staff. EleanorRoosevelt used the holidays to draw attention to Great Depression conditions – by visiting tree-lightingsin Black and working-class neighborhoods, along with charitable events hosted by the Salvation Army, Central Union Mission or a local Kiwanis club.
But the Roosevelts still celebrated a private Christmas, hanging stockings in the family quarters (including one with a rubber bone for Fala the Scottish terrier). Each year, FDR sat with his family for more than three hours to read Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
Christmas through war and peace
Then came wartime. In the days after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were on high alert. Fear and nighttime blackouts triggered calls to cancel the tree lighting.
On Christmas Eve, as the nation's capital bristled with extra security, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – who had sailed for 10 days across the Atlantic to discuss global war strategy – emerged on the South Portico to light the tree. Christmas, the president told the assembled crowd and a nationwide radio audience, signified the "dignity and brotherhood of man" in the face of "enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them."
World War II brought changes large and small to Christmas at the White House. Roosevelt's four sons fanned out on active duty, scattered across the world. Holiday gifts to staff included war bonds and a scroll with Roosevelt's "D-Day Prayer." As conservation and rationing took hold, electric bulbs were replaced with ornaments made by local schoolchildren.
When the war ended in 1945, President Harry Truman lit the tree with electricity once again: "This is the Christmas that a war-weary world has prayed for through long and awful years."
Christmas at the White House resumed its growth and traditions. It was first lady Mamie Eisenhower – who one year installed 26 trees, varying from tabletop size to 18 feet – who started the practice of regularly displaying a tree in the Blue Room.
Jackie Kennedy followed, kicking off a tradition of decorating themes (she chose Nutcracker Suite). Motifs since have included Antique Toys, Mother Goose, American Craft, 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, Holidays in the National Parks, All Creatures Great and Small, and Simple Gifts. (This year's is We the People.)
First lady Patricia Nixon used Christmas to make the White House more visible and accessible, including candlelight tours for the public.
She also began the practice of commissioning White House chefs to build holiday gingerbread houses – a simple A-frame design at first; later festooned with candy, jellybeans and reindeer; then growing into a village of gingerbread houses topped with hundreds of marzipan figures and spun sugar decorations. In 1993, first lady Hillary Clinton oversaw the creation of a gingerbread replica of the White House that weighed nearly 100 pounds.
Others have modeled Santa's workshop, a winter castle and national monuments and historic landmarks.
Patricia Nixon's gingerbread legacy lives on in this year's "White House in Gingerbread" ornament – the latest in a White House ornament series going back to 1981 that has become a holiday tradition for millions of Americans.
Holiday celebrations
have become diverse
White House holiday celebrations are also becoming more diverse. President Jimmy Carter began a tradition of attending local Hanukkah celebrations that President George W. Bush converted into an annual White House menorah lighting, in which the Marine Band plays Hanukkah favorites.
Before the White House acquired a permanent menorah, it would often borrow a historically significant one for the occasion: 2008 featured a bronze candelabra given to President Truman by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for the president's help in establishing the state of Israel. (It was lit by the two leaders' grandsons.)
After the parties and shopping and traveling, there will come an all-too-short respite. Maybe a little snow will cover the White House and its lawn and the trees, a moment of gray and white calm.
Presidents Truman and Reagan were known to try their hand at snowballs; here's hoping that many of you can do the same this year.
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1941 seems like a million years ago now.
Yep and unfortunately we now have entire generations that are completely clueless of the sacrifices required back then and are too busy bitching about their data plans and having to actually work to make a living to give a damn.
Sad, very sad.
Exactly, and it took a few more months for FDR to forcibly relocate and incarcerate over 125 thousand people of Japanese descent in US concentration camps.
Odd how people forget that little bit of information.
Thank you for mentioning that.
It was Reagan that signed a law giving those still alive that were put into US internment camps reparations.
Racism only applies to those on the right. FDR was a leftist through and through; so his racism is overlooked by Democrats and leftists.
And only if it's directed at blacks (or what ever the shiny object of the day is).
It's those pink tinted lenses.
Good read!!!!!
No one has forgotten that Japanese Americans were treated unfairly, but it was war time and lots of bad choices were made due to the war. How about the US Army, without approval from FDR, relocated 1100 Aleut Indians to internment camps where about 10% of them died, supposedly to protect them? That seems to be forgotten in history, too.
... you won't be teaching crt classes anytime soon.
Many have forgotten about it. Just like they forgot about the the same thing happening Native Americans, under the same POTUS.
None of it is excusable by any shape or form. I thought the "thing to do" was not celebrate those who have done things like this. Yet here we are doing just that, celebrating a POTUS whose racist policies hurt a specific demographic(s).
True but armchair quarterbacking such bad decisions with hindsight decades, even centuries later, does little good either.
Jeremy,
He wasn't perfect by a long shot, but he did save this country. In that sense, he was no different than Lincoln. Lincoln was a racist, too, but we still honor him for keeping the country together.
I agree. Now if we are going to call out those how did wrong, we need to call them all out.
LOL...
That is not what this article is about. It is about what a Christmas message that FDR made, and for some reason, you guys decided it was time to bash that.
There is not bashing that. It's the other things he's done that overshadows that message for others.
Sorry no. Holding a country together during wartime is a very important thing. Churchill did the same thing for the same reason.
It is still not the topic of this article.
Really?
You know Perrie, it's degrading enough to come over here and comment on one of these BS articles, but to hear people who should know better try to protect FDR from a little well deserved crtiticism is appalling. FDR also wanted to stack the Court and never got the US out of the depression. He got elected 4 times because he convinced Americans at the time, that he knew how to get us out from under the Great Depression and he didn't. WWII got us out! He was very sick and failing in his final year and because of him Eastern Europe was all but handed over to Stalin.
BTW Lincoln was not a racist. The only racists I know are democrats.
Example: "white Cubans are hateful."
It's should be noted that the Aleuts were never allowed to return to their homeland and Reagen gave the Japanese $20,000 each for being in the internment camps he/congress gave the Aleuts only $12,000. Oh, and 40 Aleut were taken as POW where half of them died in Japan.
It was the Alaska Natives that were the first line of defense for Alaska in WWII, known as the Eskimo Scouts.
BS article? It is an article about Christmas tradition at the WH and all your buddies did nothing but come here and shit on it with off topic bullshit.
Well Ender, for something that is "off topic" you and others have gone to great lengths to debate it.
Once somebody calls "Lincoln a racist" all claims to topic are over.
Vic,
I'm on this article, but I have to tell you that it is meta. The article is not about FDR in general. It was about a wartime Christmas message.
And btw, Lincoln was a racist. Racists know no party. They just are and I have met plenty in both parties.
I haven't debated shit so stop with the making of ones own reality.
Wrong Vic. I was just making a point that no one is perfect.
You may want to do some research on the interment of the Japanese. William Warren as AG of CA and later governor was instrumental in that disaster additionally only one prominent politician of either party was against it and that was Governor Carr or Colorado.
You may want to actually read what Frederick Douglass had to say about that and some of Lincoln's own thoughts are good reading as well.
It's a very small world that you live in.
Whatever the point, Lincoln was never a racist.
No he was not. Have you joined the woke?
Vic, I'm taking this off topic to another article. No, I have not joined the woke, but I will make my point in another article.
Fair enough.
Being woke isn't a bad thing. Those who disparage the woke aren't woke in the first place and oblivious to the true meaning of what it means to be woke
A very, very NARROW world Kav!
Tess,
I don't care what people want to call it. To me, the word woke sounds kitschy. I deal in facts.
It was actually Earl Warren, the future liberal Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
r additionally only one prominent politician of either party was aga
FDR's own AG argued against it.
That's what they do . . . . .
whatever
3 hours in and this seed has become a beacon for hate [removed]
You are correct it was Earl Warren who was a Republican.
My comment said ''politician'' and the AG isn't a politician but if you want to count him that makes two. Additionally, he argued that Japanese that were American citizens shouldn't be interned but did not argue that non-citizens of Japanese ancestry couldn't be interned.
What kind of nonsense is that? The topic of the seed is clearly how the White House has noted Christmas over the decades. With a starting emphasis on Roosevelt in 1941. Lincoln's racism has nothing to do with it. However, the person who brought up Lincoln was only reacting to the previous off topic comments about FDR.
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Abraham Lincoln did not agree with slavery and always thought it should be ended. He also thought that in an integrated society whites would always naturally have the upper hand. Does that make him a racist? Its a matter of opinion.
Hmmmmm .... one wonders how many more would been taken prisoner and/or died had they not been relocated. Well not really.
It undoubtably would have been many more.
We do know that 10% that were ''interned'' for protection died while in US custody from lack of care.
There are a number of articles on this and how the Aleuts were treated by the US government. In the meantime, the Aleuts and thousands of other indigenous Alaskans joined the Territorial Guard known as the Eskimo Scouts to guard the shores of Alaska.
I don’t need a link to know a much higher percentage would have died with the Japanese. Interned or not. You know how the Japanese were in WW2 with prisoners. One word.
Brutal.
You do need a link to understand the conditions that the Aleut people kept in and the US government finally apologized and paid some restitution.
You do need a link to understand the conditions that the Aleut people kept in and the US government finally apologized and paid some restitution.
Nah but that chip on shoulders is getting your way again.
Nah but that chip on shoulders is getting your way again.
So you just don't like the criticism. Subject or not, it doesn't change what happened. And here I thought the progressive thing to do was to call out things like this. I guess it's subjective.
Far too many people make the mistake of trying to judge many American historical figures of the past according to today's standards while ignoring the context of the times in which they lived. Accepted norms, good or bad and right or wrong do in fact change with the times.