Cards and Tree Lightings

Season's Greetings from the White House, Mary Evans Seeley

This is a coffee table style book I found at the library book sale about the history of the official White House Christmas card and also the lighting of the National Christmas Tree, which date to the same era. The special production of a Christmas card from the White House started during Calvin Coolidge's presidency, as did the erection of a Christmas tree, originally on the lawn of the White House, as a "National Tree." The cards were created by artists who produced watercolors, gouache, and other media types for the White House—except for most of the cards during the Eisenhower administration, which were painted by the President himself—and then specially made by Hallmark or American Greetings. The lighting of the tree and the President's speech is also covered for each year the President was in office, and later articles detail how the White House itself was decorated and the theme each First Lady chose for that year. There are large photos of each card and something about the artist and how he (there were no female artists chosen, not even in the Clinton era) conceived and created the painting. This itself may be the best part of the book, as the narrative is a bit dry, but learning how the artists perceived their commission and how they then carried it out is fascinating. The book covers the administrations of Coolidge through Clinton, and, as an appendix, selected addresses by the President at the National Tree Lighting are reproduced (such as Roosevelt's famous 1941 sharing of the platform with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was secretly in town for war planning against the Nazis; Churchill's speech is also included) and Reagan's speech after the return of the Iranian hostages after their 444-day ordeal.

Worth finding if you are a White House history devotee or even someone who enjoys knowing how an original artwork is commissioned and then becomes a Christmas card or print.