The White House Christmas Tree

Millions of families decorate fresh cut Christmas trees every year, and those trees are enjoyed by friends and relatives throughout the holiday season. One family, however, puts up a tree for the entire country to enjoy. That family is the nation’s First Family, and the tree in question stands resplendent in the Blue Room of the White House. When the 2006 White House Christmas Tree goes up, it will represent the most recent link in a long chain of presidential holiday trees.

In 1856, Franklin Pierce, a native of the evergreen-rich state of New Hampshire, enjoyed the first decorated White House Christmas Tree. The unbroken tradition did not really begin in earnest, however, until 1889, when President Benjamin Harrison, his wife Caroline, their adult children and grandchildren celebrated the holiday around a lavishly decorated tree. Bedecked with candles, it was displayed in the second floor Oval Room, which is now known as the Blue Room.

White House Christmas Trees shone forth for presidential families and the nation during the dark years of World Wars I and II and into the Cold War. During the Depression years of the 1930’s President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only had a tree in the White House, but even established his own Christmas tree farm on his Hyde Park, New York estate.

Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of decorating the White House Tree according to a single theme, and it continues to this day. The first themed tree, in 1961, featured ornaments inspired by the ballet “The Nutcracker Suite”. Since then themes have ranged from state flowers to Mother Goose to “Winter Wonderland.” The First Lady decides the theme each year and the ornaments are often made by specially selected groups of artisans.

In 1966, during the Johnson administration, the National Christmas Tree Association, a growers’ trade group, donated the White House tree, beginning a tradition that has continued for forty years. Growers in various tree-producing states vie with each other for the honor of entering their best specimens in a national competition. The national winner is selected as the White House Christmas Tree and presented to the First Lady at the end of November. It is then decorated by the White House Floral Department.

In four decades only six growers have won the honor of supplying the White House Christmas Tree more than once. The Fraser fir holds the distinction of having been used as the White House tree more often than any other variety.