I'm dreaming of a White House Christmas

Tom writes: Returning home to Virginia after visiting Lisa in Colorado (before we got married) I sat next to a woman who was going to DC for a conference of sorts. From what I could glean looking over her shoulder at her reading materials, she was rather critical of the current administration. I imagined that she was kind of down on America, too. So her reaction surprised me when we flew in over the Potomac River, where you could look down and see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the Mall, the White House, and the Capitol. She became as excited as a six year old at Christmas. It spoke volumes of the power of the symbols in our nation's capital. But growing up here, I don't think they had the same effect on me. Today, however, I had a different experience.

A relative offered my mom, brother, Lisa, and me tickets for an open house at the White House this afternoon. And you can be sure we went. The place was decorated for Christmas and it was beautiful. But what amazed me more was how stately it was, with large, open rooms decorated with paintings of all the presidents and the first ladies and memorabilia from different administrations. We always see footage in movies or news clips, but it was very different to actually walk around the South Lawn, or to look into the Rose Garden. Facing south you look out over the ellipse onto the Washington Monument. It is all green, like living in a house that backs up to a golf course. But what is most remarkable is that it feels like a world unto itself, somehow separated from the "real world" just outside the gates. This gives it a certain timeless quality that strikes me as befitting of its place in the world.

I would like to have given you a video tour, but they told us no video, just still pictures (and even then, they would not let us take the picture of the Secret Service officer coming in from his outside shift, armed to the teeth and wearing body armor). So without further ado:

If you are feeling festive and you are at the White House, this is what you might look like.


And luck for me, they let me keep this ornament :-)





















This is a painting of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, painted in the mid 1800s.


A presidential ginger bread man, sans one leg (yum)





And here, a creche - with a rather interesting depiction of medieval kings in a Roman setting.









The presidential library has been around for about 80 years, with a remarkable variety of sources.






Dusk looking over the South Lawn, with the Washington Monument in the background.