White House Christmas tree Henry Hoover began the tradition of presidential wives decorating the White House tree with the first "official" White House Christmas tree in 1929. In 1961 First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of selecting a theme for the White House Christmas tree by decorating with a Nutcracker motif. As stated, there were years where no indoor White House Christmas tree was installed at all. It is verifiable that there was no Christmas tree in the White House in 1902, 1904, 1907, and 1922. The lack of a tree in 1902 was due to the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt had
White House Hanukkah Party Plaut's book "A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to Be Jewish"," (Rutgers University Press, 2012) cites President Jimmy Carter's daily diary entry detailing his lighting of the shamash candle on the menorah in the presence of the Chabad Rabbi. See www.akosherchristmas.org In 1983, President Ronald Reagan visited the Rockville, Maryland Jewish Community Center and offered remarks after the Hanukkah menorah was lit, and in 1984, on the eve of Hanukkah, he hosted a visit to the White House by a delegation of rabbis from the Orthodox Jewish organization, American Friends of Lubavitch. The group later recounted that they were surprised