It’s the last holiday season for President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, who has decorated the White House with some eye-catching items to evoke the “peace and light” of the season.
The festive display includes a towering Christmas tree surrounded by a carousel, bronze bells and jingle bells lining a hallway, and a ceiling design that mimics falling snow.
The White House offered a preview to reporters on Monday before the first lady formally unveils the decorations later in the day. The theme is “A Season of Peace and Light.”
“As we celebrate our final holiday season here at the White House, we are guided by the values we hold sacred: faith, family, service to our country, kindness toward our neighbors, and the power of community and connection,” they wrote. the Bidens in a commemorative holiday guide that will be given to all visitors. The White House expects around 100,000 people to visit this month.
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With just a few days to go before December arrives, several countries in the world have started Christmas early. Paris welcomed the traditional lighting on the Champs Elysees.
More than 300 volunteers spent last week decorating the public spaces of the White House and its 83 Christmas trees with nearly 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) of ribbon, more than 28,000 ornaments, more than 2,200 paper doves and some 165,000 lights used in wreaths, garlands and other decorations.
The official White House tree, a towering North Carolina Fraser fir that was anchored to the Blue Room ceiling after a chandelier was removed, stands at the center of an amusement park-style carousel with reindeer, swans and other animals that go up and down poles. The tree is decorated with multicolored twinkling lights and three-dimensional holiday sweets like mints and ribbon candies. It also bears the names of each state and territory of the United States and the District of Columbia.
Guests will enter the White House under a rotating star and quickly encounter the Gold Star Tree, which honors the families of military members who have died in service. The tree is made of six gold stars, one for each of the six branches of the military, stacked on top of each other.
The bells that line the aisle of the East Colonnade symbolize the sounds of the holidays. The ceiling and windows on the upper floor of the East Room are covered with reflective decorations designed to create the feeling of snow. Silhouettes of people holding hands decorate the bases of two large Christmas trees that flank the central door of the room.
Light shines through stained glass ornaments and prisms in the Green Room while paper doves in the Red Room carry messages of peace. Pigeons are also suspended in the air along the Cross Corridor, which runs between the East Room and the State Dining Room.
In the State Dining Room, a sugar starburst sparkles above the sprawling gingerbread White House, which includes the snow-covered south grounds dotted with dozens of twinkling mini Christmas trees and a scene of people ice skating on a track on the south wing lawn.
The sugary confection — which is for display purposes only and is never eaten — was constructed using 25 sheets of ginger dough, 10 sheets of sugar cookie dough, 29.5 kilos (65 pounds) of pastillage, a sugar paste , 20.4 kilos (45 pounds) of chocolate, 22.7 kilos (50 pounds) of royal icing and 4.5 kilos (10 pounds) of gum paste.
As part of Joining Forces, Jill Biden’s White House initiative to support military families, the first lady invited National Guard families to be the first members of the public to enjoy the Christmas decorations. The Bidens’ late son Beau served in the Delaware Army National Guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015.
Biden will leave office on January 20.
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