Long before Christmas, four neat little potted cedars were placed on either side of the White House front door. The “public” Christmas tree, a ten-foot Norwegian spruce glistening with artificial snow and icicles, was set up in the East Room before the broad French windows. On wintery Washington evenings the old house looked like something on a Christmas card—its white expanse gleaming in the shadows, the mellow, warm light from its windows shining through the ancient, weatherbeaten oaks and maples. Poinsettias replaced the ferns in the hallways; wreaths of spruce and pine cones appeared in the windows; a spray of mistletoe hung from the big brass light in the lobby, over the Presidential seal embedded in the stone floor.
It was a quiet week in the White House. Each night from the tower of Epiphany Church, the bells rang out: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. At a reception for the members of the Supreme Court the President, cheered after his cruise, cheerfully greeted the Justices. It was quiet compared with the gathering last year, when Frank Murphy, just appointed to the Court, was the lion of the week, and the talk buzzed of the new appointments that had put James Cromwell in Canada and Robert Jackson in the Department of Justice.
Crown Princess Juliana of The Netherlands was a house guest at the White House for several days, during which the Princess visited Mount Vernon with Mrs. Roosevelt (Said she: “Why, there are no cupboards in the rooms ! Where did they hang their clothes?”). The Princess was given an ovation at a National Symphony concert in Constitution Hall, attended Mrs. Roosevelt’s press conference, and, as an amateur camera enthusiast, calmly took photographs of the newscameramen snapping pictures of her.
Earlier Roosevelt Christmas celebrations in the White House were unlike the solemn Christmas of 1940. In the Roosevelt family, Christmas means the gathering of the clan, a hearty outpouring of Roosevelt high spirits, a time for children, grandchildren, toys, recollections, big family dinners, and loud family festivities at the unwrapping of the presents. So it was 51 years ago, when Franklin, aged 7, printed his card to his mother with all the Ns right side up, the Ss turned the right way around, and asking for “some little boats.” So it was through the Christmas seasons during the ’30’s, when they all trooped to the White House—James, Anna, John, Elliott, Franklin Jr., “Sistie” and “Buzzie” Dall, the in-laws, and, as the one-woman embodiment of all the Roosevelt traditions, the President’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt.
Last week preparations for Christmas went on as usual. In the east end of the second-floor corridor stood the small family tree, decorated with ornaments handed down via attic trunk from one Christmas to the next. And, as in the past, the President’s plans called for the familiar, pleasant ritual of the season—the wishing of Merry Christmas to the members of his office staff, the scene in which the President and his wife receive the members of the White House staff and their children, the lighting of the Christmas tree outside the White House on Christmas Eve, the brief radio message in which the President would speak Christmas greetings to the nation. Each year, after the family dinner on Christmas Eve, the President reads part of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the young ones and the grownups—taking different selections in different years, but always including the opening scene of Scrooge’s cold old countinghouse, always winding up with the flourish of Christmas dinner at the Cratchits and the jubilation of Tiny Tim.
Last week there were no changes in these traditional plans. But the mood of Christmas 1940 was different—in the White House as in many another U. S. home. For the first time the children were scattered—Anna stayed in Seattle, James on the Pacific Coast, John in Boston. Elliott, traveling for the Army, could not get to Washington. Only Franklin Jr., his wife and Franklin Roosevelt III, aged 2½, were on hand as in the past. There were only two children to hang their stockings on the mantelpiece in the President’s bedroom—Franklin III and Harry Hopkins’ small daughter, Diana. It was the quietest Christmas since the first that the Roosevelts spent in the White House. The changed mood was like that of Christians all over the world—a mood based on the realization that the Christmas of 1940 was not merely a time of warm rituals, that the Christmas message of peace on earth and good will to men meant, to the Christian world, everything or nothing at all.
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