Question: How have the holidays been celebrated by our presidents?
From: Hauenstein Center staff and friends, Grand Rapids, MI
Date: December 18, 2004
Gleaves answers: To our visitors, holiday greetings from the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies! Around Grand Valley I have run into several people who have asked if there would be something on the website talking about how our presidents have traditionally celebrated the holidays.
It surprises many Americans to learn that Christmas was not celebrated by every community in the early years of the United States. Some descendents of the New England Puritans, for example, avoided placing special emphasis on the Yuletide season. But in states like Virginia, Christmas enjoyed more popularity. At Mount Vernon on Christmas morning, the festivities organized by George and Martha Washington began at daybreak with a fox hunt. A hearty midday feast followed in a celebration that included Christmas pie, music, dancing, and visits with friends and relatives that sometimes continued for a week.
One of the most unusual Christmas celebrations was hosted by James Buchanan, our nation’s lone bachelor president. In 1857 he threw a party for 30 American Indians representing the Ponca, Pawnee, and Pottawatomie tribes. An eyewitness account reported that while the Pottawatomie arrived in “citizen’s dress,” the Pawnee and Ponca “were in their grandest attire, and more than profuse of paint and feathers.”
Half a century later, Theodore Roosevelt almost forbade bringing a Christmas tree into the White House. A staunch conservationist, TR didn’t believe in cutting down conifers for decoration. Two of his boys, Theodore Jr. and Kermit, got into a bit of trouble when their father caught them dragging two small trees into their rooms. After the incident, Roosevelt spoke with Gifford Pinchot, the famous forester, who persuaded TR that selectively cutting down trees helped forests thrive. That was enough for TR, and the first family kept the trees Theodore Jr. and Kermit had dragged in, and every year thereafter brought a Christmas tree into the White House.
In 1923 First Lady Grace Coolidge accepted the gift of a large Christmas tree given by the District of Columbia Public Schools, and it became the first cut tree ever displayed on the grounds outside the White House. The balsam fir was decorated and displayed on the South Lawn. To dazzle citizens with new technology, President and Mrs. Coolidge were able to light the tree by merely pushing a button – a feat that we take for granted today but that caused wonderment then!
The idea of having themes for official White House Christmas trees was championed by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961. A tree decorated with ornaments reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite stood in the Blue Room. Some of the ornaments were reused on the next year’s tree and included brightly wrapped packages, candy canes, gingerbread cookies, and straw ornaments crafted by disabled persons and older citizens from all over the United States.
With the growth of the environmental movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s, President Richard Nixon took an environmentally friendly step. In 1972 he planted a Colorado blue spruce on the Ellipse south of the White House. By 1978 the spruce was large enough and sturdy enough to be designated the National Christmas Tree. It is lit up every year in early December and tended by the National Park Service.
Back in the residence, topping the official White House Christmas tree has become another holiday tradition, and that feat has been accomplished by former First Lady Barbara Bush a record twelve times. She had the honor from 1981 to 1992, during President Reagan’s and her husband’s combined three terms.
Increasingly, American presidents have been sensitive to the fact that the holiday season is not just celebrated by Christians, but by believers of other faiths and people from other traditions. For instance, several presidents – among them Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – have participated in Hanukkah celebrations. In 1998 President Clinton joined Israel’s President Weizman in Jerusalem to light the first candle of Hanukkah. And this year a 100-year old menorah, borrowed from the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York, was lit in the White House residence for the first time. President and Mrs. George W. Bush celebrated the holiday with staff members and their families by lighting the second candle on December 10th.
As Americans, we have much to celebrate this holiday season among our family, friends, and colleagues, and we at the Hauenstein Center wish you a happy holiday and productive 2005.
Showing posts with label 15. James Buchanan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 15. James Buchanan. Show all posts
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
(Sad) bachelor president
Question: Has there ever been a president who was not married?
From: Todd P. of Big Rapids, MI
Date: October 13, 2004
Gleaves answers: Only one man never married before, during, or after his time in the White House: our 15th president, James Buchanan, was America's only bachelor to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Apparently not by choice: it turns out that Buchanan was as unlucky in love as he was in luck when later he was president. He came close to marrying in his late twenties. During the summer of 1819, at the age of 28, he became engaged to Anne Coleman, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was the daughter of the richest man in Pennsylvania, Robert Coleman. Contemporary accounts say that she was extremely winsome. But by the fall there was a deal-breaking lovers' quarrel. It is conjectured that Anne was unhappy for three reasons: (1) she thought that he put his career before her; (2) she grew suspicious that James was marrying her only for her money; and (3) his underlying sexual orientation may have been toward other men.[1]
We will probably never know exactly what caused the break-up, as Buchanan did something rather curious. Years after the engagement, he placed under lock-and-key documents that he claimed would explain why the couple broke up. But when he died and the sealed materials were found, there was a note accompanying them stipulating that the materials be destroyed unexamined; Buchanan's executors complied, so we will probably never know the particulars of the break-up.
After Anne broke off the engagement, she went to stay with relatives in Philadelphia to recover from her emotional wounds. There the 23-year-old's health deteriorated precipitously and she died suddenly on December 9, 1819. Some believe she suffered from a terminal case of "hysterical convulsions" (epilepsy); others, that she committed suicide. Whatever the cause of death, her father would forever hold James responsible for the loss of his daughter; he even prevented James from attending the funeral or walking in procession behind the coffin.
James took Anne's death hard. He wrote: "I have lost the only earthly object of my affections, without whom life now presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off, and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in the grave."[2]
In later years, Buchanan tried to cultivate the impression that he would never marry again, as a sign of devotion to Anne. But in fact in 1833 and again in 1856 he tried to woo a mate. This last apparent attempt occurred when he was running for president, and he seriously considered engaging Dolley Madison's nineteen-year-old niece, Anna Payne. But that relationship never ripened into full romance.[3]
In 1856, Buchanan was elected the nation's fifteenth president and went to the White House having never married. He asked his orphaned niece, Harriet Lane, whom he had reared, to serve as the official hostess of the White House.
Historian Jean Baker puts Buchanan's bachelorhood in broader context: "In the end James Buchanan never married and so remains the only bachelor among American presidents. Certainly bachelorhood has always been an exceptional and potentially harmful status for any public man in any generation. Before the Civil War only three of every one hundred American men stayed single. Buchanan's celibacy (there was never creditable gossip about his having a sexual relationship with any woman) shaped his personality. His life was never modulated by the need to make compromising adjustments in his domestic affairs, nor did he benefit from the intimacy, affection, and relaxation that a marriage and family might have afforded. An often lonely James Buchanan came to depend on his male friends, and this reliance had a dramatic impact on American history in the winter of 1860 [just before the Civil War]."[4]
___________________
[1]Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 20.
[2]George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States (New York: Harper & Bros., 1883), vol. 2, pp. 664ff; quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents: From George Washington to George Bush, 3rd ed. (New York: Wing Books, 1991), pp. 213, 223.
[3]Baker, Life, p. 21.
[4]Baker, Life, p. 22.
From: Todd P. of Big Rapids, MI
Date: October 13, 2004
Gleaves answers: Only one man never married before, during, or after his time in the White House: our 15th president, James Buchanan, was America's only bachelor to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Apparently not by choice: it turns out that Buchanan was as unlucky in love as he was in luck when later he was president. He came close to marrying in his late twenties. During the summer of 1819, at the age of 28, he became engaged to Anne Coleman, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was the daughter of the richest man in Pennsylvania, Robert Coleman. Contemporary accounts say that she was extremely winsome. But by the fall there was a deal-breaking lovers' quarrel. It is conjectured that Anne was unhappy for three reasons: (1) she thought that he put his career before her; (2) she grew suspicious that James was marrying her only for her money; and (3) his underlying sexual orientation may have been toward other men.[1]
We will probably never know exactly what caused the break-up, as Buchanan did something rather curious. Years after the engagement, he placed under lock-and-key documents that he claimed would explain why the couple broke up. But when he died and the sealed materials were found, there was a note accompanying them stipulating that the materials be destroyed unexamined; Buchanan's executors complied, so we will probably never know the particulars of the break-up.
After Anne broke off the engagement, she went to stay with relatives in Philadelphia to recover from her emotional wounds. There the 23-year-old's health deteriorated precipitously and she died suddenly on December 9, 1819. Some believe she suffered from a terminal case of "hysterical convulsions" (epilepsy); others, that she committed suicide. Whatever the cause of death, her father would forever hold James responsible for the loss of his daughter; he even prevented James from attending the funeral or walking in procession behind the coffin.
James took Anne's death hard. He wrote: "I have lost the only earthly object of my affections, without whom life now presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off, and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in the grave."[2]
In later years, Buchanan tried to cultivate the impression that he would never marry again, as a sign of devotion to Anne. But in fact in 1833 and again in 1856 he tried to woo a mate. This last apparent attempt occurred when he was running for president, and he seriously considered engaging Dolley Madison's nineteen-year-old niece, Anna Payne. But that relationship never ripened into full romance.[3]
In 1856, Buchanan was elected the nation's fifteenth president and went to the White House having never married. He asked his orphaned niece, Harriet Lane, whom he had reared, to serve as the official hostess of the White House.
Historian Jean Baker puts Buchanan's bachelorhood in broader context: "In the end James Buchanan never married and so remains the only bachelor among American presidents. Certainly bachelorhood has always been an exceptional and potentially harmful status for any public man in any generation. Before the Civil War only three of every one hundred American men stayed single. Buchanan's celibacy (there was never creditable gossip about his having a sexual relationship with any woman) shaped his personality. His life was never modulated by the need to make compromising adjustments in his domestic affairs, nor did he benefit from the intimacy, affection, and relaxation that a marriage and family might have afforded. An often lonely James Buchanan came to depend on his male friends, and this reliance had a dramatic impact on American history in the winter of 1860 [just before the Civil War]."[4]
___________________
[1]Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 20.
[2]George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States (New York: Harper & Bros., 1883), vol. 2, pp. 664ff; quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents: From George Washington to George Bush, 3rd ed. (New York: Wing Books, 1991), pp. 213, 223.
[3]Baker, Life, p. 21.
[4]Baker, Life, p. 22.
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