Tour Two Decades of White House Holiday Christmas Decorations

From the very first White House Christmas party — held in December 1800 by President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams, for government officials and their families — to this year’s public celebration of “Magic, Wonder and Joy,” during which more than 100,000 visitors are expected to stop by, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has hosted historic holiday festivities, both literally and figuratively. Grab a cup of cocoa and join us in revisiting some of its most memorable contemporary decorations, like 2023’s “Magic Under the Tree” illusion, above, in which a towering evergreen seems to be growing through the East Portico’s roof.

The Red Room is just one of many White House spaces dedicated to evoking the 2025 year theme, "Home Is Where the Heart Is." Here, 10,000 blue butterflies offer a spirit of hope, transformation and renewal. White ribbons wrap around the tree to convey the room's official message of “Fostering the Future.”

The entrance to the 2024 White House Christmas display features a massive rotating star, which serves as a beacon of welcome and an indication of the official 2024 theme: “A Season of Peace and Light." The elegant guiding light is one of more than 165,000 installed for the holidays. Inside the White House, reflective ornaments, bells and soaring doves create a serene and festive experience.

The season’s most joyful and wondrous decor might be the eight tiny reindeer pulling a sleigh through the Grand Foyer — no mean feat, given the White House is also a working museum and seasonal decorators are strictly forbidden to alter it. This ingenious display celebrates the 200th anniversary of Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit from St. Nicholas — better known by its iconic opening words, “’Twas the night before Christmas.”

In 2022, guests were welcomed back into the White House for the first time since the pandemic — and so 2022's “We the People” theme was only fitting. Here in the Grand Foyer and throughout the building, the First Lady chose mirrored decorations and ornaments so visitors could "see themselves" in its rooms.

As the largest room in the White House, the East Room hosted the biggest of 2021’s holiday "gifts" — the "Gift of Gratitude," represented by trees adorned with handwritten notes and oversized replicas of holiday cards. As the White House’s virtual tour guide put it, “Whether it is penning a thank you card, sending a sweet text with a heart emoji or dropping off muffins on a neighbor’s front porch, these expressions of gratitude heal our hearts and bring us together.”

In 2020, the Christmas tree in the Red Room featured handmade ornaments saluting the heroism of first responders and frontline workers who serve our communities. A quartet of illuminated miniature houses nestled in the mantel’s garland served as a nod to the importance of home and family. Four of the White House’s 106 evergreen wreaths — one outside each of the Red Room’s windows — are a traditional symbol of resilience and hope.

The beloved White House Gingerbread House in the State Dining Room is always a showstopper, and 2019’s addition to the tradition was no exception. In addition to the White House itself, the intricate confection featured landmarks from around the country, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Seattle’s Space Needle, Mount Rushmore, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Alamo and the Statue of Liberty.

Intricate, custom-designed cityscapes celebrating America’s skylines and architecture shared space with the White House’s Neapolitan crèche (on display for its 51st year, spanning 10 Presidential administrations) in the East Room in 2018. The year’s decorating theme — “American Treasures” — was a nod to the country’s unique heritage, landmarks, parks and monuments.

The Blue Room’s chandelier is removed each holiday season to accommodate the official White House Christmas Tree — which in 2017 was an 18-foot, 6-inch balsam fir grown in Endeavor, Wisconsin. Encircled with a draped evergreen garland and wide blue velvet ribbons, the tree featured more ribbon, golden lights and traditional painted glass ornaments with the seals of each US state and territory.

For 2016, the ground floor corridor — which was initially a work and storage space and now leads to the Library, the Vermeil Room, the China Room, the Diplomatic Reception Room and the Map Room — became a wintery wonderland featuring “snowball” arches created from more than 6,000 white and silver ornaments. Snowmen greeted visitors on either side of the corridor as well as in the Rose Garden, and one even photobombed the President in an official White House Photo of the Day.

A lacy array of hand-cut paper snowflakes transformed the ceiling of the East Colonnade in 2015. As in nature, no two of the creations are alike: some of the snowflakes represent America’s 56 states and territories and feature state flags and seals, while others were made by students from Washington, DC’s Amidon-Bowen Elementary School and Horton’s Kids (a nonprofit that supports children and families in the Washington, DC, area).

The State Dining Room’s seasonal decorations for 2014 celebrated the year’s theme of “A Children’s Winter Wonderland” and the magic of traveling during the holidays. Custom-made train tickets with the White House’s “A Children’s Winter Wonderland” logo sat atop stacks of vintage luggage dusted with glitter and covered with stickers to evoke the golden age of train travel. Christmas trees across the room featured more travel-themed ornaments and miniature trains and tracks encircling their trunks.

The East Garden Room embodied its nickname — Booksellers Hall — in 2013 when repurposed hardcover books formed a tree with pages carved to spell out “Share Your Story.” More than 450 books were used throughout the White House’s holiday decor; two much smaller book trees appear elsewhere in this display beside First Pets Bo and Sunny, created with more than 1,000 yards of satin ribbon.

For 2012, in turn, a Santa-hat-clad Bo topiary composed of 20,000 volunteer-applied pom-poms was the outright centerpiece of Booksellers Hall. Look closely at those miniature Christmas trees flanking him and you might catch a glimpse of handmade “Bo-flakes” adorning them.

In an elegant twist on the Red Room’s customary cranberry topiary, 2011’s holiday decor featured a tone-on-tone tabletop urn striped with hand-applied pepper berries and cranberries, then filled with fresh roses, hydrangeas and peonies. A pair of wreaths striped with the same berries and adorned with wide white bows crowned the room’s pair of windows and Christmas trees.

The 2010 version of the White House Gingerbread House featured a rare, delightful look at how the interior of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. might appear in edible form. This sweet version of the State Dining Room features tiny, frosted trees, as well as medallions, ceiling details and a mantel rendered in white chocolate that glows in the light of a diminutive chandelier.

For 2009, Barneys New York creative director Simon Doonan lent his expertise to the White House to embody its “Reflect, Rejoice, Renew” theme. The environmentally conscious Christmas displays he designed included twinkling LED lights, dried hydrangeas upcycled from fresh floral displays and these elegant, earth-toned trees in the State Dining Room — which he conceptualized to complement the William Cogswell portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hangs between them and decorated in part with dried roots from the White House kitchen garden.

The tree in the Palm Room (which functions as a visitors' foyer for the White House’s West Wing as well as a gathering area for the press) took on coastal character in 2007 when the First Lady gave the “Holidays in the National Parks” a sub-theme highlighting our seashores. Twelve different types of shells adorned this tree, which weighed roughly a ton; a shell wreath that matched it was five feet in diameter.

A “Merriment and Melody” theme set the tone for the White House in 2004, and the Grand Foyer’s nearly 30 twinkling trees supported a delicate layer of snow in service of the space’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” sub-theme (one of 13 songs illustrated throughout the building). Statuettes of a young couple perched on a sofa holding a scroll of sheet music completed the scene.