text: Bfetek JKMK flj f|il| Slljjra Sii^ ■k, ’mlf*'** fe. w* jkiu* v\* :■ * JfflWjMjte&m---* >#ife% Ik "*i2 y B ; *f : ■,| ms(kpi < •? HL v - - 'i ”.«^HKl^ra#rP < Tfc,wti : P ’%. ■ i ’*' S', ■-. ’ wMv ■. j|| K «• ■KrJKiaSIA^-itJ? %k/Wsmk, JTy & *\ff\, ; r r * - ■.' s<&■'- f ” "SX.xtsp '' vP 4 * <4 1 v fej# ■ 3c? g» "»P'Jlf '•Bgjii^jßßfiP'L i ; -r-,'H JBF iryj# A/y» K s‘' * s JtAjK^a^iiffW H ;%irWk $+ iig^M'^iiiiiiiiiiSnMffj^K/lff^lr”^^«r 1 Ifr*gt,iyy ■f if TrPniift H # • Jil \A jwfc/ipHß^ Hr 9 —' HpPy j# jii s"^t'/il-^l^./ »''^s\,. t - a* Jk>a.**«* Jt^kif 9^.^ *A#cPr * i.'W^^^' 4s *’ 4>C* WSmIHP&SIKBO^^^^HhbK’«r3BB’ JA_ *ra jpy Jr jP- &ufw* <* YOU ARE SUCH A NICE MAN— A lot of children today feel like doing what Patricia, left, and Julie Nixon, children of Vice President and Mrs. Nixon, are doing to Santa Claus in this picture. Those fortunate enough to have received bright Christmas EXCLUSIVELY YOURS By BETTY BEALE What Does a Capital VIP Find on Christmas Day? Merry Christmas to all of you. May you have as much joy in the coming year as we in this business have hors d’oeuvres. Further than that one cannot go. If by some unthinkable chance you have opened your presents before reading this, you may want to compare your loot with that of some well-known Capital figures. So—for your information, presidential candidate Estes Kefauver found a subtle hint from his wife when he looked at his presents. Nancy gave him a lawn mower to use on the grounds of their new Washington house, though she doubts if campaigning Estes will ever have time to put hand to it... “Everybody gives him everything else, but I don’t think anyone else will give him a lawn mower,” chuckled Nancy, who’s planning to stick to home and children this time. Maybe the mower was to put the same notion in Estes’ head... Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey found cuff links from his wife with his Treasury flag on them, probably in gold as befits the fellow who’s sitting on top of the United States funds. His offspring gave him a gift too big for his stocking—a duck boat for the pond on his Georgia plantation... Illinois’ Senator Douglas found a set of Beethoven symphonies to replace the ones ruined when the basement of their former home was flooded. They've acquired a new abode, too... Senator John Sparkman gave his wife living room furniture for their new house, will spend the holidays hanging "and re-hanging" pictures. All Attorney General Brown Well wanted for Christmas was not two front teeth but two garters for winter-length socks. That's not to say that the head of the Justice Department wears bobby sox the rest of the year; he just felt the need of some sox appeal.... He found a pair inside a new 4-piece set of luggage.... Nowadays a Washington official wears out a set of luggage in a couple or so years.... Louisiana's Russell Long, still the Senate’s baby, gave his wife Kay a beautiful “white evening dress with green on it and bows all over it.” That’s the best the Senator could do in describing same. He picked it out himself, aided by a slip of paper that said "size 8”..., Judging toys are pretty happy about the whole situation. They would like good old St. Nick to know that even though they may have broken some of his toys by now, they were awfully excited this morning and have already by other dresses he's selected for Kay, he can pick mine out any day.... Postmaster General Art Summerfield gave Washington flocks of mail deliveries during the holiday rush, gave his antique-loving wife, Miriam, some fine Georgian silver. He will take her to Florida after Christmas to convalesce from a long illness.... Senator Mike Monroney found four tickets to the Oklahoma vs. Maryland Orange Bowl game in his stocking. He, his wife and the Mike, jr.’s, leave tomorrow for a week on one of the Florida Keys, ending at the Oklahoma game. ... Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks got a fix-it kit; he adores to tinker... Vermont’s Senator Flanders gave his wife, who’s an authority on New England ballads, a five-volume set of "English and Scottish Popular Ballads," one of a rare limited printing published in Boston in 1882... Assistant Secretary of State Henry Holland received from his wife, Betty, some more high equipment. United States Ambassador to Luxembourg Wiley Buchanan gave Ruth the last word in fashion for the lady who travels. It's a Persian lamb jacket with two extra detached collars—one of silver blue mink and one of black seal with specially matched gloves for each... Over in Luxembourg, every single orphan in the country received a Christmas stocking from the Buchanan... But nobody, I betcha, had a better Christmas than Margaret Truman, if my information is correct. I understand that the figure on her contract with NBC reads $100,000! That’s a lot of Christmas. I hope you’ve had the same. DATELINE PARIS By BRENDA HELSER Nothing Can Match the Mood Of an American Christmas PARIS, Dec. 24.—Don't let anyone give you a complex about celebrating Christmas as you are celebrating right now, with tinsel and glitter and presents for the whole family. In France Christmas, like milk, “is for children.” As they spend New Year’s eve, grownups spend the eve of Christmas at parties called "Reveillon." An hour or so after Maman et Papa weave wearily home from the midnight-onwards feasting les enfants pounce in upon them demanding to be shown what le Pere Noel has left in their shoes. American Mommys and Daddys, too, are usually sleepy at Christmas dawn but their reveille, in principle, has been dedicated to putting the show on the road. Over here the big show comes at a more convenient, less enchanting, hour in the afternoon when the serious gifts are distributed around a tree after an enormous and traditional lunch. The menu is so rich that grownups are quite content to forget all about Christmas, retire, and leave it to the children. An Austrian Yule is made to order for believers in purely spiritual Christmases unadulterated by anything the least picked out their favorites. This picture of the Nixon children was taken at the Pageant of Peace when they made an advance call on Santa Claus to talk to him and to see his reindeer.—Star Staff Photo by Randolph Routt. bit jazzy and commercial. One year, as an advocate of White Christmases, I engineered a safari into the wilds of the Austrian Tyrol. Specifically, we went to St. Anton-am-Arlberg. It's a snug, tiny, very colorful village quite unmarked by the swarms of sophisticated foreigners who go there for winter sports. The people, churches, houses, and shops look something off 50-year-old post cards. Nature herself is a grove of Christmas trees. What a setup for a bit of tinsel and a colored light or two, even three. But Christmas came and went. It was remembered only for much tolling of bells, ski school as usual, and that sunk feeling that goes with having already opened one's packages because "we had Christmas early" before we left home" as if anyone could possibly "have" Christmas early! Opening a package around about the 22nd when it’s plainly marked “Don’t Touch Before the 25th” is just about the most wretched fraud ever perpetrated by man (or family.) Not even the Queen of Holland saved the day. Juliana, Prince Bernard and their daughters were in St. Anton. While they radiate health, happiness, and contentment there is nothing especially Christmassy about them. European Christmases are more spiritual than ours. French Christmases, laced with champagne, pure fois gras, and firm grey caviar are more gastro-nomic, but nothing can match the excitement, the anticipation, and the exhausting payoff of an American Christmas. It registers. One knows one has observed the yuletide. Her Christian Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England is giving Prince Philip a new uniform, and some cashmere sweaters for Christmas. He, as usual, is presenting her with the sort of jewels no one else ever dares give her; simple things that need no state occasion to wear. Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend have exchanged gifts. He, who is always more than willing to let such little things "leak" out, made it known that he now owns a ring which once belonged to King George VI and had been filled to his younger daughter. When retired, Labor Leader Clement Attlee decided to be known merely as Earl Attlee from nowhere in particular, the editor of Burke’s Peerage, L. G. Pine said: “It really shakes me. It may result in peers becoming confused with American band leaders like Duke Ellington and Count Basie. We have always proceeded on the assumption that if we have a peerage or no liability or whatever you like to call them, we must maintain— if only fictionally—territorial connections in some way.” The White House Lights Will Blaze This Christmas This Christmas Historic Mansion Holds Many Yule Memories By ISABELLE SHELTON The lights will blaze at the White House tonight, for the first Christmas in several years. For the first time since Mr. Eisenhower has been President, the family is spending the Yule holiday at the executive mansion. Former President and Mrs. Truman spent only one Christmas there out of the seven during which he was the Chief Executive. The Trumans' one White House Christmas was in 1952 — his last year as President — and was a very subdued affair, because Mrs. Truman's mother, who had long made her home with the Trumans, had died just a few weeks before. Hence, it has been 10 years since boistrous young presidential grandchildren, such as the Eisenhowers’ three — David, 7; Barbara Anne, 6, and Susan, 3, have romped in the mansion's hallowed halls at Christmas. Baby Mary Jean, born to the Eisenhower's son John and daughter-in-law Barbara last Wednesday, is spending the day at Walter Reed Hospital. There always was a full complement of grandchildren and much boistrous merriment during the long reign of Mr. Truman’s predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Three-Day Production The big, friendly Roosevelt clan made a three-day production out of Christmas. The events, which started two days ahead of time, included a party for the White House office staff, another for the domestic staff — butlers, footmen, cooks, etc., with their families; a Christmas dance for the young set, and family gatherings on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Everyone at each of the parties received a personal gift from the President and his wife. Mrs. Roosevelt began collecting the gifts the preceding January each year, as she pursued her storied travels across the nation. “She shops as she runs,” one chronicler noted at the time — pottery from a New England wayside. Stand, neckties from an orphanage benefit sale, baskets from a school for the blind, furniture from a mountaineer handicraft shop. Each Christmas Eve, the entire Roosevelt family, from F. D. R’s mother to the new est grandchild, gathered around the big Christmas tree in the East Room, while the President read Dickens' Christmas Carol aloud. Then the whole family, including the adults, filed upstairs to the President’s bedroom, where each hung his stocking on the mantel. Mr. Roosevelt was not by nature an early riser, but he had no alternative on Christmas. The grandchildren descended upon his room at dawn, and, to quote an earlier account, “from that moment until sundown there was probably more pandemonium per square inch in the White House than in all the heterogeneous, farflung agencies of the New Deal put together.” High Jinks The Order High-spirited high jinks also were the order of the day when the earlier Roosevelt tribe, headed by Theodore Roosevelt, were installed in the White House. One famous story from the Teddy Roosevelt era concerns the time the President stood on the north portico roaring with laughter, as he watched his high-spirited sons, hatchets in hand, chase a turkey across the White House lawn. A reporter happened by and wrote a story on the event, which brought down upon the President’s head the wrath of animal lovers and protective societies. There also was the occasion when the Roosevelt boys, Kermit, Archie and Quentin, sneaked a pony upstairs, in the White House, and another occasion when Archie and Quentin smuggled in a Christmas tree and trimmed it in Archie's room. Their father, an ardent conservationist, had banned Christmas trees in the mansion, but he subsequently was persuaded by his conservation chief, Gifford Pinchot, that supervised cutting did not menace future forests. Young Tad Lincoln, who once took a goat to bed with him in the White House, possessed the nearest thing to Rooseveltian high spirits in the earlier White House years. One Christmas day, Tad, who was soon to follow his father in death, showed up at the door of the White House kitchen with a group of bedraggled and very hungry street urchins in tow. Asked that they all be fed. The outraged cook shooed the motley crew away, but Tad appealed to his father, and President Lincoln ordered that all be fed handsomely. Herbert Hoover tried mightily to unbend for the White House Christmases during his regime, according to accounts. But he was never too successful. Mrs. Hoover installed an old custom from her family, which called for the house lights to be put out while the whole group trooped through the house carrying lighted candles and singing Christmas carols. Hoover led the procession each year, it is recorded, "wearing a wan smile and looking ill at ease. No one really missed him when he slipped quietly away." The first family to spend Christmas in the White House was that of John Adams, the second President. Mrs. Adams, who has gone down in history as the woman who hung her laundry in the East Room, related in letters to friends how unhappy she was at her first White House Christmas. The building was cold and damp and far from completed. There were no bells to summon the servants, and wood for fuel was scarce, “although there was a forest of trees as far as the eye could reach.” Despite the discomforts, Abigail Adams planned to give a Christmas Day reception for Congress—first burning up 20 cords of wood in an effort to dry out the walls. But the party “was a frost,” she wrote home. The guests sat around uncomfortably, shivering in the intense cold. Touching Story One of the most touching White House Christmas stories concerns President Andrew Jackson. The President's young nephew, Johnny Donelson, who spent the Christmas of 1835 in the White House, expressed some concern about what Santa Claus was bringing him and asked his uncle: “Did you ever hear of a Christmas when Santa Claus didn't come, Uncle Andrew?” “Yes,” said the aged warrior President. “Once, there was a little boy who never heard of Santa Claus and who never had a toy. When his mother died he was all alone in the world. I was that boy.” The reminder of his unhappy childhood spurred Jackson to consider the plight of other orphans, and he invited hundreds of them to the White House that year, entertaining them with wild tales of Indian Wars. The party also featured a “snow ball fight” in the East Room, with the youngsters using starched cotton balls instead of snow. The aged President is said to have joined in the game. Johnny Donelson and his five brothers and sisters tried hard to make that 1835 Christmas pleasant for their uncle, who was lonesome and saddened by the recent death of his much-maligned wife, Rachel. The youngsters insisted that Jackson hang up his stocking Christmas eve, and the next morning his secretary, entering the room unexpectedly, found the old warrior in tears over the corncob pipe, tobacco, and other trinkets the children had sneaked into the stocking. Memorable Parties Dolly Madison, still regarded as the most glamorous of all the First Ladies, presided at some of the most memorable White House Christmas parties. An old account describing the Madisons' 1811 Christmas said that Mrs. Madison, as always, "completely dominated the scene." She was described as "a magnificent looking woman, 43 or so, tall, stately, buxom and rosy." She wore much rouge, the account continued, "enough indeed to be perceptible in a very bright light," purple velvet frock, pearls, and many bracelets. Her hair was worn in long dark ringlets. After the Virginia country manner, all the food was placed on the table at one time—an elegant table, completely covered with a huge mirror which Mrs. Madison had had especially made in France. There were turkeys, chickens, canvas-back ducks, roasted wild game, vegetables, fruits, and several kinds of pudding. There was a waiter for each guest—available by the day from several slave-owners at the rate of 35 cents for an evening. Party. Other prices then current were: Turkeys, 75 cents each; ducks, 50 cents; a whole pig, $3. All was not always rosy for White House occupants at the Christmas season. An anti-Hayes newspaper, still smarting over the bitterness of the recent Tilden-Hayes Presidential campaign, had this to say the first year Rutherford B. Hayes was in the White House. "This unpleasant thought will obtrude itself, that this will be the first time a usurper has celebrated Christmas in the White House. But Santa Claus descends the chimney-like on the just and the unjust." 