Calvin Coolidge was the first U.S. president to press the magic button to illuminate an outdoor Christmas tree on the White House lawn in 1923. All 2,500 or so green, white and red bulbs lit up just as planned and right on cue.
This year’s National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 30 celebrates the 100-year anniversary of this annual event…while featuring a century of technological advancements.
Annie Brackemyre of the
National Park Foundation said this year’s tree will contain more than “13,000
feet (or 2.5 miles) of lights strung end-to-end, 63,750 individual LED bulbs,
and 400+ ornaments.”
The tradition of having a National Christmas Tree began as a bright idea that was first expressed by Lucretia Walker Hardy, a civic leader in Washington. In a letter addressed to presidential secretary Campbell Bascom Slemp in 1923, she said:
“It seems that the use of
the White House grounds for this Christmas tree will give the sentiment and the
(associated) exercises a national character.”
Slemp, a former U.S.
Congressman from Big Stone Gap, Va., agreed to help. He ran Hardy’s idea by
First Lady Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge, who gave the suggestion her blessing…and
promised to “speak to Cal.”
There was another angle to the story, however, according to Mark Bushnell, a Vermont journalist and historian.
It involved Frederick
Feiker, press agent for U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. (Feiker
“moonlighted” as vice president of the Society for Electrical Development, an
industry trade association.)
Feiker leaned on U.S.
Sen. Frank L. Greene of Vermont, a chum of Coolidge, to arrange a meeting with
the president. (Greene and Coolidge were both Vermont natives.)
Feiker convincingly asserted: “The tree would serve as the nation’s Christmas tree and honor the importance of Christmas as a religious holiday.”
But there was another
motive, and Feiker eventually confessed: “The Society for Electrical
Development was interested in having as many people use electric lights at
Christmas time as possible.”
“In order to get this started, we had to get the president of the United States to light the tree,” Feiker said.
It was a slick publicity stunt. Electric lights on Christmas trees were viewed by many as a luxury in 1923. Electric lights were still far from the norm, Bushnell said. “Many rural parts of America, including the president’s hometown of Plymouth, Vt., didn’t even have electricity yet.”
Hardy informed Slemp that
she had “made arrangements” to provide a “large and thoroughly representative”
tree for the occasion. She reached out to Paul Dwight Moody, president of
Middlebury (Vt.) College, who selected a 48-foot balsam fir from the Middlebury
forest preserve in the Green Mountains.
A group of alumni paid to
have the tree shipped by train to Washington. Branches on the bottom 10 feet of
the tree were badly damaged during transit, so organizers had to arrange for
some cosmetic surgery. They had branches cut from other trees and lashed to the
fir.
The Electric League of Washington spent $5,000 running underground electrical cables to the tree.
Coolidge lit the tree at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve in 1923. He refused to make a speech. Those were the good old days.
The National Park Service reported that the “worst experience” involving the National Christmas Tree occurred in 1970 when the train carrying a 78-foot spruce from South Dakota derailed in Nebraska – twice.
“A few days after the lighting
ceremony, the electrical sockets that had been coated with fireproofing liquid
spray caused the bulbs on the lower half of the tree to explode,” the NPS
noted.
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