Politics

A White (House) Christmas

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 4, 1999 / 1:14 PM EST / CBS

It's starting to look a bit like Christmas at the White House, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller. Although no boughs of holly have been sighted, workers have started to deck the halls with greenery.

And while the Mrs. Clinton has announced that she soon won't have the time to perform normal first lady chores, she was on hand to receive the official White House Christmas tree. An 18 1/2 foot fir was hipped from the state of Washington for the job. When next year's tree arrives, Mrs. Clinton will either be a senator-elect or a lame duck First Lady.

Mrs. ClintonÂ's aspirations to be U.S. Senator from New York did overlap with her un-elected office for Hanukkah. She was present for the lighting of the menorah to mark the first night of the Jewish holiday. She skipped the ceremony in years past, but with millions of Jewish voters in New York, the event took on new political importance.

This is the next-to-last White House Christmas for President Clinton as well. Last year, the President put on a happy face for the lighting of the national Christmas tree just five days before his impeachment.

Calvin Coolidge was the first U.S. president to push the button and light up the tree in 1923. The lightings are normally cheery and hokey ceremonies, but on occasion grim world events have intruded.

In 1979, the nation was in less of a holiday mood as 50 Americans were being held hostage in Iran. That year, the national tree had 50 smaller ones around it - one for each American hostage.


The 1979 lighting ceremony under the Carter administration was overshadowed by a hostage crisis.

President Carter explained the altered ceremony: "On the top of the great Christmas tree is a star of hope. We will turn on the other lights on the tree when the American hostages come home."

Carter didnÂ't get to turn on the other lights that Christmas or the next, and most of the American hostages werenÂ't released until January 1981.

Since 1978, the National Christmas tree has been the same living Colorado blue spruce decorated with more than 75,000 lights. No one gets a bigger lift out of the blue spruce than the wife of the vice president. Tradition calls for them to climb into a cherry picker each December and be raised 40 feet in the air to place a star atop the tree.