Upstairs, Christmas Morning 1889
The first documented Christmas tree in the White House did not stand in the Blue Room. It stood upstairs, in the second-floor Oval Room, then used as a family library and parlor. President Benjamin Harrison put it there for his grandchildren.
Harrison was born on August 20, 1833, on a farm by the Ohio River at North Bend. He was the grandson of William Henry Harrison. Friends found him warm and jolly. He doted on the children who shared the crowded second floor with him: Mary McKee's little ones, young Benjamin, called Baby McKee by the press, and Mary. They played on the South Lawn with the family goat, His Whiskers.
The Gardener and the Tree
On the family's first Christmas in the house, Harrison conferred with the White House gardener, Henry Pfister. Pfister and the bouquet makers on his staff hung ropes of holly and prince's feather ferns in the library, with sprigs of mistletoe. In the center of the room they placed what one observer called the most beautiful and perfect tree that could be found in all the country. It was lit with candles.
William H. Crook, an executive clerk who had known the house since Lincoln's time, saw it on Christmas morning. From the topmost point to the floor, he wrote, it was laden with decorations, with toys innumerable for the children and gifts for the older ones.
Caroline Harrison made sure the staff was remembered. Married men on the domestic force received a turkey. Single men received fine gloves. The first would eat at home. The second would dress up and eat out.
From a Family Room to the State Floor
For most of the nineteenth century, first families kept Christmas private. Greens, family, friends. The Harrison tree stayed that way. It took another 23 years before a tree appeared on the State Floor. In December 1912, the Taft children helped decorate one in the Blue Room. Jacqueline Kennedy, in 1961, gave the official tree a theme. The Nutcracker. Toys, birds, angels.
The public spectacle grew from a grandfather amusing two children in a library.
Still Looking
The candles are gone. The Blue Room tree is now the one the country sees. The habit started in that upstairs parlor in 1889.
Our 2020 White House Heritage Collection ornament looks into that oval room, the one that holds the official tree. Finished in 24k gold, made in America, and sold only here.
See the 2020 Blue Room ornament. Collect the rest of the White House Heritage Collection.