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.
Christmas 1924 was somber. Coolidge wrote his father in December: “I wish you a very merry Christmas. If only Calvin [Jr.] were with us, we should be very happy.” The American people, touched by their president’s loss and sadness, sent him a record-setting 12,000 Christmas cards. The pain was still fresh the following Christmas when Coolidge wrote to his father again, contemplating all of the deceased relatives who would no longer open holiday presents. “It is getting to be Christmas time again. I always think of mother and Abbie [his deceased sister] and grandmother and now of Calvin. Perhaps you will see them all before I do but in a little while we shall all be together for Christmas.” Sadly, Coolidge was right — his father would not live to see the Christmas of 1926.
Coolidge received many requests for a Christmas message before he finally agreed to write one in 1927. On Christmas morning, the short hand-written message appeared in every major newspaper, making this the first Christmas greeting to be given to America from her president. The message was simple and understated (which is to say, it was vintage Coolidge). “Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things there will be born in us a Savior and over us all will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.” Christmas could be everyday, as long as the mind summoned Christ’s teachings.
After the presidency, in the 1930 Christmas Eve edition of his nationally syndicated newspaper column, Coolidge ruminated on the way in which Christmas reflects Christ’s importance in human affairs. “Every day has been numberless times a birthday. Only a few are widely celebrated, for it is not the event of birth, but what is done in after life, that makes a natal day especially significant.” We celebrate Christmas, Coolidge wrote, “wherever there has been a vestige of Western civilization, because on that day was born one who grew to be the only perfect man and became Savior of the world. . . . No other fact, no other influence in human experience has compared with the birth and life of Christ.” Not even his beloved Lincoln, whose modest beginnings and great accomplishments Coolidge often compared to Christ, could compare.
Christ, Coolidge noted, “has born the name of Master,” a title he earned “not by the use of any material force, but by demonstrating the moral and spiritual power of mankind.” Christmas “represents [His] love and mercy . . . ushered in by the star of hope,” which foretold God making his presence known to mankind.” Christmas, a time of joy and love, will be “forever consecrated by the sacrifice of the cross.” More than gifts or carols, Christmas “holds its place in the hearts of men because they know that love is the greatest thing in the world.” Amen.
— Charles C. Johnson is a writer based in Los Angeles and author of a forthcoming biography of Calvin Coolidge.