NATIONAL CHRISTMAS TREE
HISTORY*
The origin of a Christmas Tree for the Nation goes back to 1913 and the lighting of the "Washington Community Christmas Tree". With great fanfare and pageantry, 20,000 observers crowded the East Plaza of the U.S. Capitol on Christmas Eve to hear the "President's Own" Marine Band and a chorus of one thousand, and to view a presentation of the Nativity following the illumination of the tree. The Greater Washington Board of Trade and other civic organizations led the event's planning with newspaper accounts indicating that both President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas Marshall were involved in what The Washington Post called "A Civic Christmas".
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge lit a Community Christmas Tree on behalf of "all Americans". A senator from Vermont, Coolidge's home state, arranged for a cut fir tree from Middlebury College to be erected in President's Park (The Ellipse) for lighting. President Coolidge declined to speak at the ceremony but he did push the switch box button to light the sixty-foot tree. NBC radio carried the event locally and later in the evening the "President's Own" Marine Band played a concert near the National Christmas Tree.
Tradition calls for the Vice President's wife to place the star atop the National Christmas Tree, assisted by the chairman of the Christmas Pageant of Peace.
The current tree is a live, growing, 60-foot Colorado Blue Spruce that was transplanted from York, Pennsylvania in 1978.
In 1973 the first living National Christmas Tree since the creation of the Pageant of Peace was planted on the Ellipse. The 42-foot Colorado blue spruce from northern Pennsylvania was donated by the National Arborist Association and was meant to serve as a permanent National Christmas Tree. Unfortunately, the tree was dying in 1976 and had to be replaced for the 1977 Pageant of Peace.
A new live tree (Colorado Blue Spruce) donated by an anonymous family in Maryland was used for the 1977 program, but blew down in January 1978 during a violent wind storm.
A replacement tree, planted in October of 1978, has survived to date under care and attention by National Park Service horticulturalists. It was donated by Mr. and Mrs. William E. Myers and transplanted from their farm in York, Pennsylvania. The tree had been a Mother's Day gift to Mrs. Myers and had stood on her farm for 15 years. It was first decorated for the 1978 National Christmas Pageant of Peace and has been used ever since.
For information of this year's activities, click here Pageant of Peace.
*Source - National Park Service
