Presidential Holiday Parties Throughout History

Unusual Decorations on the Tree

In former FBI Gary Aldrich’s book, he described some interesting things that supposedly happened at the White House during the Clinton Administration. For example, they did some… not so family-friendly Christmas tree decorating. He said they used condoms and drug paraphernalia to decorate one of the trees, though George Stephanopolous disputed the claim. There are, as we all know, many insane and entirely untrue conspiracy theories about this family.

Remember, they did set the record for most trees in the White House so they could have easily placed those unusual decorations on one of the many trees they had around.

First Christmas Tree

You may not know this, but the tradition of decorating a tree during the Christmas season was not a fixture of the holidays at all until the very late 1800s. In 1889, Benjamin Harrison was the first president to bring a tree inside the White House. It was set up in the yellow oval room on the second floor where it was decorated with candles and small toys.

As years passed by, however, the location of the tree and how it was decorated changed quite a bit. You will see just exactly how as you continue on.