In 1929, First Lady Lou Hoover decorated a Christmas tree in the Entrance Hall with gingerbread men and horses. Lady Bird Johnson also decorated the official Blue Room Christmas tree in 1965 with gingerbread cookies in the form of Santa Claus, snowmen, camels, teddy bears, dolls, and milkmaids. In 1968, a gingerbread cottage was gifted to the White House and displayed in the State Dining Room. The following year, Assistant Executive Chef Hans Raffert added the first traditional German A-frame gingerbread house design for the Nixons as part of their holiday decorations.

Changing Gingerbread House Styles

Beginning in 1969, White House Assistant Executive Chef Hans Raffert built increasingly larger and more elaborate gingerbread houses based on a traditional German-style A-frame design. With each succeeding year the houses were adorned with more and more candy canes, gingerbread men, hard candies, jellybeans, and reindeer. In 1992 Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier assumed responsibility for designing and constructing the annual gingerbread house and expanded the original concept to encompass a village of five gingerbread houses, decorated with hundreds of marzipan figures and spun sugar adornments. In 1993 he created a nearly 100-pound gingerbread house replica of the White House designed to scale.

Since then, White House gingerbread houses have highlighted themes such as Santa’s North Pole workshop, a winter wonderland castle, treasured monuments of the Nation’s Capital, and views of historic nineteenth- and twentieth-century White Houses. In recent years, the gingerbread houses have contributed to the overall themes selected by our first ladies for the official Christmas tree and the mansion’s decorations, a tradition that began in 1961 with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Prominent examples were Chef Mesnier’s gingerbread versions of the White House with the South Lawn filled with hand-modeled marzipan presidential pets as part of the 2002 Christmas theme, “All Creatures Great and Small.” For the 2003 “Season of Stories” he created marzipan figures of characters from popular children’s stories that populated the Truman Balcony, South Porch and South Lawn.

Traditions of White House Holiday Décor

The White House observance of Christmas before the twentieth century was not a public event. First families decorated the mantels modestly with greens and privately celebrated the Yuletide with family and friends. The first known White House Christmas tree, decorated with candles and toys, was placed in the Second Floor Oval Room, then used as a library and family parlor, in 1889 for President Benjamin Harrison and his family. Many first families after the Harrisons set up Christmas trees upstairs in the Residence, but it wasn't until 1912 when the Taft family placed the first known tree in the Blue Room on the State Floor for their visiting relatives. Since then, successive first families have added more and more trees to the State Floor. First Lady Grace Coolidge had trees in the Blue Room and East Room on a number of occasions, and her husband, President Calvin Coolidge was the first chief executive to preside over the National Christmas tree lighting ceremony on the Ellipse in 1923. The Hoovers usually had at least two trees, one upstairs in the Residence and another large tree in the East Room -- this became a consistent tradition as the East Room was the ideal space for large holiday parties and receptions.

In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of selecting a theme for the official Blue Room White House Christmas tree decorated with ornamental toys, birds, and angels modeled after Petr Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite.” Since that time each first lady has chosen a Christmas tree theme and decorated the mansion with the assistance of her staff and a team of volunteers. At times certain decorations have been especially popular with visitors and returned each year such as the Cranberry tree in the Red Room that made its first appearance in 1975. For more than 50 years, White House holiday themes have included largely nostalgic or traditional themes, such as the Nutcracker Suite, early America, American Flowers, an old-fashioned traditional Christmas, antique toys, Mother Goose, family literacy, the Twelve Days of Christmas, Home for the Holidays, and Simple Gifts. The elegant White House mantels throughout the Ground Level and State Floor become the canvas of some of the most creative and beautiful decorations shaped each year by the theme of the first lady’s holiday décor.