Interesting bit of Christmas trivia - Whitehouse Christmas tree

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Did you know that there was no Whitehouse Christmas tree until 1889? Wonder what Fux Noise would make of this?

[frazzled]

1. Apparently, the custom was not common in the US till

the 1870s, so maybe it's not surprising (or ideological):

A woodcut of the British Royal family with their Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, initially published in The Illustrated London News December 1848, was copied in the United States at Christmas 1850, in Godey's Lady's Book. Godey's copied it exactly, except for the removal of the Queen's tiara and Prince Albert's moustache, to remake the engraving into an American scene.[40] The republished Godey's image became the first widely circulated picture of a decorated evergreen Christmas tree in America. Art historian Karal Ann Marling called Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, shorn of their royal trappings, "the first influential American Christmas tree".[41] Folk-culture historian Alfred Lewis Shoemaker states, "In all of America there was no more important medium in spreading the Christmas tree in the decade 1850–60 than Godey's Lady's Book". The image was reprinted in 1860, and by the 1870s, putting up a Christmas tree had become common in America.[40]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree#North_America

[lame54]

2. They'd say that nothing could outshine Reagan