The Carlisle independent., 1915-12-16
IN THE WHITE HOUSE
How Presidents of Past Enjoyed
 Christmas Holidays.
No Celebration by John Quincy Adams Because He Regarded Religious Festival as a Foolish
 Extravagance.
CCoRDING to history the onl

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 who did not celebrate Christmas because he regarded it as a foolish extravagance) was John Quincy Ad- ans, the most economical man known in public life.'
 Mrs. John Adams, the wife of the second president of the United States, had a most discouraging time trying to make merry in the White House during the Christmas holidays. (She was the first wife of president to celebrate Christmas in the executive mansion in Washington, for the presi- dent and Mrs. Washington were al ways at Mount Vernon for the holi- days.) She had no dominating sense of economy, but it was the White House itself that was shabby, and Christmas reception given to the mem bers of congress by the president proved. from her point of view, to be a ghastly failure.
 President Jefferson was a widower with four daughters, and during his second administration Martha, the cid est, was the head of her fathers household, and made Christmas the happy and festive occasion it was de- signed to be from that time when the star stood still above the manager in Bethlehem.
 There were trees, and decorations, and all sorts of entertainments for the children of the official families, as we'll as gifts for the poor of the capital.
 Although the Madisons did not spend all of their Christmases in the White House, on account of the little historical interruption by the British, when they occupied other quarters for a time, the brilliant Dolly managed record for holiday hospitality and merrymaking that has never been sur passed.
 When Andrew Jackson came to the White House he was bowed and bro- ken by the death of his wife and de- pressed by political animosities. He had neither heart nor the slightest in- clination for holiday celebrations, yet he pulled himself together at Christ mas time, and saw to it that the day meant something happy to those in the White House.
 In the meantime the Monroe admin. istration was marked by nothing in the way of holiday celebrations be- yond what was conventionally pre- scribed, and after President Jackson's efforts at keeping the spirit of Christ mas in spite of his own personal sor- rows, President Harrison did not live to see a Christmas in the White House.
 Mrs Tyler lived to celebrate only one Christmas in the White House. After his second marriage the Tyler administration was noted for it's bril- liant entertainments. Whether it was Christmas or any other time of the the old Virginia style, and there was no stint of merrymaking at the White House.
 The Polk administration reverted to the grim and practical idea of John Quincy Adams. Perhaps it was not economy that changed the Christmas celebration at the White House; it is difficult to define the reason why Pres ident Polk did not make the holidays a festive event in the executive man. sion; it may have been the tempera- ment of the chief executive; perhaps 1t was because Mrs. Polk did not be- lieve in the gay and festive way of celebrating the holidays, as, according to intimate history, she did not.
 President Zachary Taylor, brilliant figure in military history, who had no chance whatever in the social history of the White House, because he died in little more than year after he had taken his seat as president of the United States, and spent only one Christmas in the White House, be- queathed his administration to the Fillmores, people pitiably distin- guished by sorrow and in no way adapted to the social obligations of the great national responsibility of sustaining the political and social ob- legations of the White House.
 Shortly after becoming president, someone writes of President Fillmore, This wife died, and a year later a daughter, an only child, passed to the great eternity