Once upon a time, Christmas trees were still called Christmas trees. There were no Black Friday sales, no “Jingle Bell Rock,” and certainly no lawsuits over the permissibility of public celebration of the birth of Christ.

Calvin Coolidge loved Christmas. Christmastime was a “sacrament observed with the exchange of gifts, when the stockings were hung, and the spruce tree was lighted in the symbol of Christian faith and love,” he wrote in his Autobiography. It was Christmas Eve, 1923, when President Coolidge lit the first “National Christmas tree” on the White House lawn. A 48-foot balsam fir, the tree was cut and transported from his beloved Vermont, given as a gift from the president of Middlebury College and paid for by Middlebury alumni. Vermont senator Frank L. Greene convinced the reluctant Coolidge to flip the switch. It would, alas, be the last Christmas Senator Green would actually enjoy; he was struck by a stray bullet from Prohibition agents on his walk along the Capitol that following February. He died from complications six years later.

The tree’s 2,500 electric bulbs — red, white, and green — were donated by the Electric League of Washington and lit by an electrical switch thrown by Coolidge himself. That evening, the First Congregational Church and hundreds of citizens gathered to sing carols to the First Family. Afterward, a 72-voice choir serenaded the North Portico. At midnight, Washington’s black community, led by the “Colored Community Centers and the D.C. Public Schools,” held a 40-minute ceremony at the community tree. It was a joyful time of year, when black and white alike came together to celebrate their common joy and their common, though problematic, brotherhood as God’s children. Fittingly — shockingly, according to today’s sensibilities — a cross was flashed on the Washington monument.

Every holiday has its stressful moments, though. Coolidge, like many of us, was hard-pressed to think of a holiday gift for his wife. He bought Mrs. Coolidge 25 one-dollar gold coins, but forgot a card, instead re-gifting one that had come from a friend days earlier and simply read, “Compliments of the Season.” (Unfortunately for the president, the name — Frank Stearns — was still on the card, a fact that did not escape the First Lady.)

The Coolidge’s Christmas was not all singing and gifts. The president’s youngest son, Calvin Jr., had contracted blood poisoning while playing tennis on the White House courts. He died eight days later, three days after Coolidge’s own birthday. To commemorate their loss Pastor James Noble Pierce of the First Congregational Church wrote Christmas Bells, which he dedicated to Mrs. Coolidge.