First
Lady Nancy Reagan chose the themes for eight White House
Christmas’s. Her official 1981 Blue Room tree was
trimmed in ornaments lent by the Museum of American Folk
Art. For all the following years, she arranged for the
people of Second Genesis, a drug treatment program in
D.C., Maryland and Virginia, to help decorate her trees.
In 1982, they made foil paper cones and metallic snowflakes.
These were reused in 1983 on a tree featuring old-fashioned
toys lent by the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum. In 1984,
Second Genesis fashioned ornaments out of plant material
to compliment natural pieces crafted by the Brandywine
Museum in Pennsylvania.
For Christmas of 1985, the Reagan’s Executive Residence
staff and Second Genesis made 1,500 ornaments from holiday
cards sent to President Reagan in 1984. The residence
staff and Second Genesis worked together for the next
three holiday seasons. In 1986, they made 15 soft-sculpture
nursery rhyme scenes and 100 geese for a ‘Mother
Goose’ tree. For the 1987 ‘musical’ tree,
they decorated miniature instruments, notes and sheet
music. White House carpenters made 300 wood candles for
Mrs. Reagan’s 1988 ‘old-fashioned’ tree,
which reused hand-blown glass ornaments from the Eisenhower
Administration and the Nixon state flower balls from 1969.
First
Lady Nancy Reagan chose the themes for eight White House
Christmas’s. Her official 1981 Blue Room tree was
trimmed in ornaments lent by the Museum of American Folk
Art. For all the following years, she arranged for the
people of Second Genesis, a drug treatment program in
D.C., Maryland and Virginia, to help decorate her trees.
In 1982, they made foil paper cones and metallic snowflakes.
These were reused in 1983 on a tree featuring old-fashioned
toys lent by the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum. In 1984,
Second Genesis fashioned ornaments out of plant material
to compliment natural pieces crafted by the Brandywine
Museum in Pennsylvania.