c. 2004 Religion News Service

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.

Now a fourth season of peace and goodwill is marked in the lengthening shadow of Sept. 11, 2001, with American troops in harm’s way. By only weeks, it follows the first presidential election since the terrorist attacks. An openly relieved first lady Laura Bush confided Dec. 2, during this year’s holiday tour, “One of the things I really thought about was, was this going to be our last Christmas here?”

But win or lose, the first couple knew they were bound to certain rituals: the lighting of the National Christmas Tree, for one, and their role as holiday hosts _ the Bushes will welcome 6,500 party guests this season.

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.

FDR lit the National Christmas Tree that year with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at his side.

Despite concerns for his safety, President Bush did likewise in 2001 _ traveling by motorcade the short distance from the White House to where the tree stands on the Ellipse.

There is a reassuring continuity in keeping Christmas. “We’ve had three sort of sad Christmases,” Laura Bush remarked to ABC’s Claire Shipman in 2003. Even so, the first lady added, “there’s a lot of optimism with the holiday season, families being together.” As if on cue, Barney, the family Scottish terrier, ambled in to lighten the mood.

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.

Out of view is an imposing portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes that hangs over a Red Room doorway. In March 1877, anxious about a potential coup after the disputed 1876 election, President Ulysses S. Grant insisted that Hayes be sworn in secretly. And so, under cover of a dinner party, he was _ in the Red Room.

The coveted White House Christmas ornament for 2004 depicts the Hayes family on a sleigh ride. According to the White House Historical Association, Lucy Hayes always provided holiday gifts for the entire staff, from doorkeepers to secretaries. White House administrator William Crook, who received a silver-plated water pitcher, remembered: “Mrs. Hayes’ smile was better than eggnog.”

On their first White House Christmas in 1877, with the presidency secured, Hayes and his wife had turned their attention to their Dec. 30 silver wedding anniversary. They chose the Blue Room to renew their vows.

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.”

Delivery of the offical tree began in 1966 under the Johnsons, amid the gathering clouds of the Vietnam War. Just after Christmas in 1967, Jackie Kennedy reached out to Lady Bird Johnson in a letter: “I hope for you that the New Year will bring you all you hope for yourself … when one can put all one’s cares and obligations aside.”

But 1968 would be the Johnsons’ last White House Christmas. Undone by Vietnam, LBJ declined to run for another term.

George W. Bush celebrates a different sort of holiday, having sought and won re-election despite a controversial war. Iraq’s elections are scheduled Jan. 30, and for Americans deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, “the work is dangerous and the mission is urgent,” the president acknowledged at the tree lighting ceremony Dec. 2.

Earlier the same day, 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.”

KRE/RB END RIOS