The Multi-Religious White House Holidays
Hanukkah, Diwali and a Ramadan iftar are all on the calendar.
By Dara Horn
Updated Dec. 19, 2013 10:32 p.m. ET
The invitation was so unexpected that I thought it was a joke: "The President and Mrs. Obama request the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah Reception to be held at the White House." As a novelist uninvolved in politics, I don't often get to attend state occasions. But as an American Jew outside the Beltway, I was also stunned by the event's mere existence. A Hanukkah party? At the White House?
Ever since Theodore Roosevelt hosted the White House's first public Christmas reception in 1903 for hundreds of children, who were surely disappointed by the conservationist president's lack of Christmas trees, White House Christmas parties have been American cultural events. For 110 years, thousands of invited guests—including military families, politicians, journalists, children, newsworthy citizens and, naturally, big donors—have enjoyed the White House's Christmas cheer. As recently as 1962, it was possible for John F. Kennedy to publicly announce that "Christmas is truly the universal holiday of all men."
The 21st-century White House hasn't diminished its Christmas festivities, but the First Families' holiday season isn't just about Christmas anymore.
The White House Hanukkah party dates to 2001, and it is actually a month younger than the White House iftar. President George W. Bush hosted the White House's first annual iftar, an Islamic feast held on Ramadan evenings to end the daily fast, as an overture to Muslim Americans two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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