December 22, 2019 • 15 mins
Theodore Roosevelt loved Christmas, but the Roosevelt family never had a Christmas tree. If you believe the stories, it's because TR, an avid conservationist, had banned them—and that ban is supposedly what led his son, Archie, to sneak a tree into the White House, a stunt that reportedly earned him a stern lecture.
That's what the stories say, but what actually happened? In this episode, we'll reveal the fact, and fiction, behind this pervasive Theodore Roosevelt Christmas tale.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's six am on Christmas morning and Theodore
Roosevelt's children, Alice, Ted Kermit, Ethel, Archie and Quentin are
pounding at the President's bedroom door. As per tradition. Their stockings,
(00:22):
which Tier notes are all bulging out with queer angles
and rotundities, are hanging above the fireplace in their parents room.
Theater and his wife Edith get up, remove the stockings,
light a fire and let the children in. The kids
eagerly unpack their stockings, and after breakfast they open bigger
presents in the library. Each child's pile of gifts is
(00:42):
on a separate table. Among the presents are an electric
railroad for Quentin, a rifle in writing boots for Archie,
and a pile of books for Tier and Edith. But
the day holds an even bigger surprise than the goodies
the Roosevelt's opened. Sometime during the festivities, Archie turns to
his father. Just look here for a minute, he said,
as I want you to glance into this old closet.
(01:03):
He presses a button and opens the closet door to
reveal a Christmas tree. It's clear that eight year old
Archie has been scheming for some time. First he drafted
a steward to buy the tiny, two foot tall tree
for twenty cents at the market and smuggle it into
the White House. Then, with the help of the carpenter,
he'd rigged it up in a closet his mother rarely used.
(01:25):
The building's electrician had helped him string it with lights
which can be turned on at the push of a button.
Gifts for each family member and for Jack the dog,
Tom Courts the kitten, and Algonquin the pony adorn the branches,
as roosevelt friend Robert Lincoln O'Brien will write a year later.
All of the family were there, as was Quentin's nurse,
(01:46):
but none appeared more astonished than Mr Roosevelt himself at
the sight of this diminutive Christmas tree. You might be wondering,
why would a Christmas tree be so surprising? Well, the
Roosevelts didn't typically have a Christmas because, according to legend anyway,
Theodore Roosevelt, avid conservationist, had banned them. The stories would
(02:07):
have you believe that when Archie revealed his festive stunt,
his father gave him a patented tr lecture, but what
actually happened? From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio, this
is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite historical
figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host,
Aaron McCarthy, and this week, in honor of the upcoming
(02:29):
Christmas holiday, we're doing something a little different. We're looking
at the fact and fiction behind a pervasive theater Roosevelt
Christmas Tale. This episode is tr versus Christmas Trees. Theodore
Roosevelt loved Christmas, which he called an occasion of literally
delirious joy. That love began in his childhood with the
(02:50):
efforts of his parents than Middy, who strove to make
the holiday special. According to historian Kathleen Dalton, when Tier
and his siblings were kids, his mother gloried in piling
Christmas table high with toys for her children, and she
loved to watch their glee on Christmas morning. Tire recalled
those days in his autobiography, writing about nabbing big stockings
(03:10):
from the grownups, hanging them up the night before Christmas,
and opening them the morning of on his parents bed.
After breakfast, Thee and Mitty would throw open the doors
of the drawing room where each child had his or
her presence piled on their own table. They kept up
the tradition even when they were traveling, and when they
spent the holiday in the city, he would often go
to one of the charitable organizations he supported for dinner,
(03:33):
the Newsboys Lodging House, for example, and bring his kids along.
In his autobiography, tr wrote that I never knew anyone
else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and
in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly
for my own children. And he did just that, repeating
the stocking breakfast presence on the table tradition year after year.
(03:56):
Of one Christmas morning, in when Tira was in d C.
Serving on this of All Service Commission, he wrote to
his sister Baby that the children enjoyed it with the
same wild rapture we ourselves felt twenty five years ago.
In three he wrote to his sister Karin, I wonder
whether there can ever come in life a thrill of
greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one
(04:17):
between the ages of say, six and fourteen, when the
library door is thrown open and you walk in to
see all the gifts like a materialized fairyland arraid on
your special table. The family loved snow around Christmas. The
kids would have all kinds of romps in the snow
to your wrote one year coasting, having snowball fights and
doing everything in the grounds back of the White House.
(04:39):
When in Long Island, they'd bundle up and take a
sleigh ride to church on Christmas Eve, and there's plenty
of physical activity, of course. The Roosevelts finished up their
first holiday in the White House by dancing a Virginia
reel in the east room. According to historian Edmund Morris,
tears wild dance moves made Edith laugh until she cried.
On Christmas two year and Ted took a three hour
(05:01):
long horse ride, and the President played a game of
single stick with some friends that left him with a
bump over one eye and a swollen wrist. You know,
typical theater Roosevelt stuff. But though they had many beloved
traditions surrounding the holiday, a Christmas tree wasn't one of them.
And while that seems weird to us now, Christmas was
celebrated much differently in the nineteenth century than it is today.
(05:24):
In a blog post for the Theatre Roosevelt Center website.
Carrie young Strand notes that back then, Christmas was a
quiet religious holiday, marked by private family traditions brought from
the old world. As Jamie Lewis writes at the Far
Society's History blog, up until the late eighteen forties, many
Americans thought Christmas trees were pagan symbols, so they weren't
pervasive in homes. The same held true for the Executive Mansion.
(05:47):
Christmas trees wouldn't become an integral part of the holiday
celebration there until the nineteen twenties. But what makes the
Roosevelt case somewhat unusual was that in the nineteenth century,
Americans often did have a tree if the household had
young children. Lewis writes that adults would presents under or
on the tree for the kids. Grover Cleveland and Benjamin
Harrison both had trees in the White House. At home
(06:09):
in Oyster Bay, the Roosevelts provided a Christmas tree, which
tr cut down himself in the woods of Sagamore Hill
with the help of an employee to kof Neck Elementary School,
where it was decorated by a teacher. Then Roosevelt acted
as Santa Claus. According to article in the New York Tribune,
when the tree was unveiled, Tier was on hand early,
(06:29):
his arms full with the store of mysterious packages and bundles,
and his eyes critically appraising the last minute decorations. The colonel,
beaming from ear to ear, announced that he had been
delegated by St. Nick to act as his emissary, and
began reading from the packages which crowded the foot of
the tree, the names of the various fortunate recipients. He
even brought them his favorite hard candy from when he
(06:51):
was a kid. In the words of his friend Jacob Brice,
Mr Roosevelt made a good Santa Claus, but still there
was no tree at home. We'll be right back. The
fact that the Roosevelt's, with a household full of young kids,
didn't have a Christmas tree in the White House made
national news basically every year. In nineteen o one, the
(07:15):
New York Daily Tribune noted that, following an established custom
in the Roosevelt household, there will be no Christmas tree
this year at the White House. That same year, the
Washington Times said that White House attendees were disappointed about
the lack of tree, writing that they had supposed that
with so many children, the tree would be indispensable. The
following year, The New York Sun reported the same thing,
(07:38):
no tree, although thanks to archie surprise, they would be wrong.
In nineteen o three, George's The Brunswick Daily said that
following the custom of last year, it has been decided
to have no Christmas tree at the White House. And
in nineteen o four, well, you get the idea. After
Archie went rogue, though Lewis writes that the papers wondered
each holiday season for the rest of tiers president and
(08:00):
see what will happen and if Archie will pull a
fast one. There was much speculation as to why the
Roosevelts went treeless on Christmas. The Washington Times reported that
the Roosevelt kids didn't even like trees, and that t
are preferred to celebrate according to the customs of Holland.
The Dutch version of Santa or Center Class, was big
on leaving gifts and footwear. South Carolina's Greenville News roade
(08:22):
in nineteen o four that Santa would visit the White
House as he did other homes in the US, but
he would not furnish a Christmas tree, and the President
and his wife do not bother about providing one. Whether
they think Santa Claus would not like for them to
do something he had failed to do cannot be officially stated,
But as soon as nineteen o three, another explanation had
emerged that Tier opposed Christmas trees because of environmental concerns.
(08:46):
As O'Brien wrote in Ladies Home Journal, the President's love
for the living things of the forest in their own
natural setting is so great it has been suggested that
he prefers not to encourage the wanton slaughter of small trees.
By December nineteen o nine, it was being reported as
fact in the press. Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Division
of Forestry, was thrown into the tail for good measure.
(09:06):
He supposedly sided with Santa Claus and showed how Christmas
tree cutting to the forest good in many places. It's
true that Tierra was no fan of destructive lumbering practices.
After all, this is the guy who created the U. S.
Forest Service and established a hundred and fifty national forests.
In five he gave a speech titled The Forest in
the Life of a Nation, in which he noted that
(09:27):
things like fire and destructive lumbering practices, combined with legitimate lumbering,
are destroying our forest resources far more rapidly than they
are being replaced, and that if there was nothing done
to curb the destruction of forests, a timber famine would
be inevitable. Remember, he added that you can prevent such
a timber famine occurring by wise action taken in time,
(09:48):
but once the famine occurs, there is no possible way
of hurrying the growth of the trees necessary to relieve it.
The guy clearly loved trees, and national sentiment at the
time was decidedly anti Christmas tree. An editorial suggested that
an inventor create a wire Christmas tree, warranted to bear
a gift for every member of the family and to
(10:08):
be absolutely fireproof. As wire is durable, a large family
of children could be brought up on one Christmas tree
and much timber would be saved. According to Lewis, President
McKinley got letters asking him to forego a tree. The
writers called cutting down trees for Christmas arboreal infanticide, and
by the time Tire became president, opposition to the practice
(10:28):
had reached its peak, with the public arguing against cutting
trees for reasons ranging from destructive harvesting practices to wastefulness.
One paper called the trees an absurd fad that we're
resulting in the woods being stripped. In his piece for
Ladies Home Journal, O'Brien noted that if t are disapproved
of the practice on conservation grounds, he has not so
(10:48):
informed his closest friends. Lewis writes that Theodore Roosevelt never
came out specifically against harvesting Christmas trees, and when he
spoke with writer Bridget Cats for a Mental Fluss piece
on this subject, Lewis was emphatic. Ultimately, Roosevelt had no
ban on Christmas trees, he told Cats. As for why
the press was so interested in the Roosevelt's lack of tree,
(11:09):
Lewis had an explanation for us. He said that not
only were the Roosevelt's a dynamic, fascinating family that the
press loved covering, but that the papers might have been
wanting for content as the holiday approached. Lewis told Cats
that Congress would have adjourned weeks before, so the media
is desperate for copy, and here we have this fascinating family.
(11:30):
I think some of the myth and legend is born
out of boredom. Frankly, still, despite the lack of evidence,
tr supposed stance on Christmas trees and the story about
pin Shows stepping into set him straight are still reported
as fact today. Theodore Roosevelt's ban on Christmas trees even
made it into an episode of Drunk History. We'll be
(11:50):
right back. The fact of the matter is, we may
never really know why the Roosevelts didn't have a tree.
Perhaps it's because Baby had one at her house and
(12:10):
the Roosevelts were there most Christmases, Or perhaps, as O'Brien wrote,
it was because the Roosevelt's favorite simplicity, the White House
was in decorated goddily for the season. Either or maybe,
as the Baltimore Sun posited in December nine, one, with
so many children and so many visitors, there was a
room for one and that Baby's tree would just have
to suffice. Or as Louis told Autlice Obscura, it could
(12:34):
be that Edith put the Kabbash on a tree. After all,
the Roosevelts had six kids and a veritable zoo of pets,
which included at one time or another, opossums flying squirrels
and kangaroo rats, a pig named Maud, a badger named Josiah,
a hyaena named Bill, a one legged rooster, guinea pigs
with names like Father O'Grady and Fighting Bob Evans, and
(12:55):
of course tomp Courts the Kitten, Algonquin the pony, and
Jack the Dog, among many many others to worry about.
But the most likely explanation seems to be that Roosevelt
loved the Christmas traditions of his childhood, and those traditions
didn't include a tree, so there was no tree, at
least not until two. What we do know is that
(13:17):
Archie's antics appear to have been met with delight, not
a lecture from the President, and may have even started
a new Roosevelt family tradition. In nineteen o six, Tier
wrote to Karin that Archie and Quentin had created a
variant on what is otherwise a strictly inherited form of
our celebration, for they fix up, or at least Archie
fixes up a special Christmas tree in Archie's room. While
(13:39):
tr and Edith were admiring Archie's tree, two kids snuck
out of the room to set up a small lighted
Christmas tree in their parents room. It had tr wrote
two huge stockings for Edith and myself. The next year
he wrote to Baby that there was a Christmas tree
of archies in as far as Society blog, Louis notes
that the casualness of Trs comments may suggest that by
(14:01):
this point a tree was actually expected, and perhaps that
fact is what led the kids to provide a tree
for their parents. They wanted to surprise tr once again.
Today Archie's exploits live on and Gary Hines's children's book
A Christmas Tree in the White House. And if this
episode has made you wonder whether you should go with
a real tree on Christmas, it's worth noting that at
(14:23):
least these days, Christmas trees are crops grown on farms.
According to the New York Times, it takes under a
decade for a tree to reach five or six ft,
and it's replaced with a new tree when a farmer
cuts it down. Christmas tree farming practices are sustainable, and
the trees do a lot for the environment before they're
cut down, and they have the potential to do more
after two if you compost them or donate them to
(14:44):
a zoo where they can be used as in Richmond
toys or snacks for animals. We'll be back next week
with a regular episode of History Versus. We hope you
have a great holiday. History Versus is hosted by me
Aaron mcarth. This episode was written by me, with fact
checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
(15:06):
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show was edited by Dylan Fagan and lowbra Ante.
To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt, check
out our website at mental fluss dot com, slash History Versus.
That's mental fluss dot com, slash hi s t o
r y vs. History Versus is the production of I
(15:26):
Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's six am on Christmas morning and Theodore
Roosevelt's children, Alice, Ted Kermit, Ethel, Archie and Quentin are
pounding at the President's bedroom door. As per tradition. Their stockings,
(00:22):
which Tier notes are all bulging out with queer angles
and rotundities, are hanging above the fireplace in their parents room.
Theater and his wife Edith get up, remove the stockings,
light a fire and let the children in. The kids
eagerly unpack their stockings, and after breakfast they open bigger
presents in the library. Each child's pile of gifts is
(00:42):
on a separate table. Among the presents are an electric
railroad for Quentin, a rifle in writing boots for Archie,
and a pile of books for Tier and Edith. But
the day holds an even bigger surprise than the goodies
the Roosevelt's opened. Sometime during the festivities, Archie turns to
his father. Just look here for a minute, he said,
as I want you to glance into this old closet.
(01:03):
He presses a button and opens the closet door to
reveal a Christmas tree. It's clear that eight year old
Archie has been scheming for some time. First he drafted
a steward to buy the tiny, two foot tall tree
for twenty cents at the market and smuggle it into
the White House. Then, with the help of the carpenter,
he'd rigged it up in a closet his mother rarely used.
(01:25):
The building's electrician had helped him string it with lights
which can be turned on at the push of a button.
Gifts for each family member and for Jack the dog,
Tom Courts the kitten, and Algonquin the pony adorn the branches,
as roosevelt friend Robert Lincoln O'Brien will write a year later.
All of the family were there, as was Quentin's nurse,
(01:46):
but none appeared more astonished than Mr Roosevelt himself at
the sight of this diminutive Christmas tree. You might be wondering,
why would a Christmas tree be so surprising? Well, the
Roosevelts didn't typically have a Christmas because, according to legend anyway,
Theodore Roosevelt, avid conservationist, had banned them. The stories would
(02:07):
have you believe that when Archie revealed his festive stunt,
his father gave him a patented tr lecture, but what
actually happened? From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio, this
is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite historical
figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host,
Aaron McCarthy, and this week, in honor of the upcoming
(02:29):
Christmas holiday, we're doing something a little different. We're looking
at the fact and fiction behind a pervasive theater Roosevelt
Christmas Tale. This episode is tr versus Christmas Trees. Theodore
Roosevelt loved Christmas, which he called an occasion of literally
delirious joy. That love began in his childhood with the
(02:50):
efforts of his parents than Middy, who strove to make
the holiday special. According to historian Kathleen Dalton, when Tier
and his siblings were kids, his mother gloried in piling
Christmas table high with toys for her children, and she
loved to watch their glee on Christmas morning. Tire recalled
those days in his autobiography, writing about nabbing big stockings
(03:10):
from the grownups, hanging them up the night before Christmas,
and opening them the morning of on his parents bed.
After breakfast, Thee and Mitty would throw open the doors
of the drawing room where each child had his or
her presence piled on their own table. They kept up
the tradition even when they were traveling, and when they
spent the holiday in the city, he would often go
to one of the charitable organizations he supported for dinner,
(03:33):
the Newsboys Lodging House, for example, and bring his kids along.
In his autobiography, tr wrote that I never knew anyone
else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and
in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly
for my own children. And he did just that, repeating
the stocking breakfast presence on the table tradition year after year.
(03:56):
Of one Christmas morning, in when Tira was in d C.
Serving on this of All Service Commission, he wrote to
his sister Baby that the children enjoyed it with the
same wild rapture we ourselves felt twenty five years ago.
In three he wrote to his sister Karin, I wonder
whether there can ever come in life a thrill of
greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one
(04:17):
between the ages of say, six and fourteen, when the
library door is thrown open and you walk in to
see all the gifts like a materialized fairyland arraid on
your special table. The family loved snow around Christmas. The
kids would have all kinds of romps in the snow
to your wrote one year coasting, having snowball fights and
doing everything in the grounds back of the White House.
(04:39):
When in Long Island, they'd bundle up and take a
sleigh ride to church on Christmas Eve, and there's plenty
of physical activity, of course. The Roosevelts finished up their
first holiday in the White House by dancing a Virginia
reel in the east room. According to historian Edmund Morris,
tears wild dance moves made Edith laugh until she cried.
On Christmas two year and Ted took a three hour
(05:01):
long horse ride, and the President played a game of
single stick with some friends that left him with a
bump over one eye and a swollen wrist. You know,
typical theater Roosevelt stuff. But though they had many beloved
traditions surrounding the holiday, a Christmas tree wasn't one of them.
And while that seems weird to us now, Christmas was
celebrated much differently in the nineteenth century than it is today.
(05:24):
In a blog post for the Theatre Roosevelt Center website.
Carrie young Strand notes that back then, Christmas was a
quiet religious holiday, marked by private family traditions brought from
the old world. As Jamie Lewis writes at the Far
Society's History blog, up until the late eighteen forties, many
Americans thought Christmas trees were pagan symbols, so they weren't
pervasive in homes. The same held true for the Executive Mansion.
(05:47):
Christmas trees wouldn't become an integral part of the holiday
celebration there until the nineteen twenties. But what makes the
Roosevelt case somewhat unusual was that in the nineteenth century,
Americans often did have a tree if the household had
young children. Lewis writes that adults would presents under or
on the tree for the kids. Grover Cleveland and Benjamin
Harrison both had trees in the White House. At home
(06:09):
in Oyster Bay, the Roosevelts provided a Christmas tree, which
tr cut down himself in the woods of Sagamore Hill
with the help of an employee to kof Neck Elementary School,
where it was decorated by a teacher. Then Roosevelt acted
as Santa Claus. According to article in the New York Tribune,
when the tree was unveiled, Tier was on hand early,
(06:29):
his arms full with the store of mysterious packages and bundles,
and his eyes critically appraising the last minute decorations. The colonel,
beaming from ear to ear, announced that he had been
delegated by St. Nick to act as his emissary, and
began reading from the packages which crowded the foot of
the tree, the names of the various fortunate recipients. He
even brought them his favorite hard candy from when he
(06:51):
was a kid. In the words of his friend Jacob Brice,
Mr Roosevelt made a good Santa Claus, but still there
was no tree at home. We'll be right back. The
fact that the Roosevelt's, with a household full of young kids,
didn't have a Christmas tree in the White House made
national news basically every year. In nineteen o one, the
(07:15):
New York Daily Tribune noted that, following an established custom
in the Roosevelt household, there will be no Christmas tree
this year at the White House. That same year, the
Washington Times said that White House attendees were disappointed about
the lack of tree, writing that they had supposed that
with so many children, the tree would be indispensable. The
following year, The New York Sun reported the same thing,
(07:38):
no tree, although thanks to archie surprise, they would be wrong.
In nineteen o three, George's The Brunswick Daily said that
following the custom of last year, it has been decided
to have no Christmas tree at the White House. And
in nineteen o four, well, you get the idea. After
Archie went rogue, though Lewis writes that the papers wondered
each holiday season for the rest of tiers president and
(08:00):
see what will happen and if Archie will pull a
fast one. There was much speculation as to why the
Roosevelts went treeless on Christmas. The Washington Times reported that
the Roosevelt kids didn't even like trees, and that t
are preferred to celebrate according to the customs of Holland.
The Dutch version of Santa or Center Class, was big
on leaving gifts and footwear. South Carolina's Greenville News roade
(08:22):
in nineteen o four that Santa would visit the White
House as he did other homes in the US, but
he would not furnish a Christmas tree, and the President
and his wife do not bother about providing one. Whether
they think Santa Claus would not like for them to
do something he had failed to do cannot be officially stated,
But as soon as nineteen o three, another explanation had
emerged that Tier opposed Christmas trees because of environmental concerns.
(08:46):
As O'Brien wrote in Ladies Home Journal, the President's love
for the living things of the forest in their own
natural setting is so great it has been suggested that
he prefers not to encourage the wanton slaughter of small trees.
By December nineteen o nine, it was being reported as
fact in the press. Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Division
of Forestry, was thrown into the tail for good measure.
(09:06):
He supposedly sided with Santa Claus and showed how Christmas
tree cutting to the forest good in many places. It's
true that Tierra was no fan of destructive lumbering practices.
After all, this is the guy who created the U. S.
Forest Service and established a hundred and fifty national forests.
In five he gave a speech titled The Forest in
the Life of a Nation, in which he noted that
(09:27):
things like fire and destructive lumbering practices, combined with legitimate lumbering,
are destroying our forest resources far more rapidly than they
are being replaced, and that if there was nothing done
to curb the destruction of forests, a timber famine would
be inevitable. Remember, he added that you can prevent such
a timber famine occurring by wise action taken in time,
(09:48):
but once the famine occurs, there is no possible way
of hurrying the growth of the trees necessary to relieve it.
The guy clearly loved trees, and national sentiment at the
time was decidedly anti Christmas tree. An editorial suggested that
an inventor create a wire Christmas tree, warranted to bear
a gift for every member of the family and to
(10:08):
be absolutely fireproof. As wire is durable, a large family
of children could be brought up on one Christmas tree
and much timber would be saved. According to Lewis, President
McKinley got letters asking him to forego a tree. The
writers called cutting down trees for Christmas arboreal infanticide, and
by the time Tire became president, opposition to the practice
(10:28):
had reached its peak, with the public arguing against cutting
trees for reasons ranging from destructive harvesting practices to wastefulness.
One paper called the trees an absurd fad that we're
resulting in the woods being stripped. In his piece for
Ladies Home Journal, O'Brien noted that if t are disapproved
of the practice on conservation grounds, he has not so
(10:48):
informed his closest friends. Lewis writes that Theodore Roosevelt never
came out specifically against harvesting Christmas trees, and when he
spoke with writer Bridget Cats for a Mental Fluss piece
on this subject, Lewis was emphatic. Ultimately, Roosevelt had no
ban on Christmas trees, he told Cats. As for why
the press was so interested in the Roosevelt's lack of tree,
(11:09):
Lewis had an explanation for us. He said that not
only were the Roosevelt's a dynamic, fascinating family that the
press loved covering, but that the papers might have been
wanting for content as the holiday approached. Lewis told Cats
that Congress would have adjourned weeks before, so the media
is desperate for copy, and here we have this fascinating family.
(11:30):
I think some of the myth and legend is born
out of boredom. Frankly, still, despite the lack of evidence,
tr supposed stance on Christmas trees and the story about
pin Shows stepping into set him straight are still reported
as fact today. Theodore Roosevelt's ban on Christmas trees even
made it into an episode of Drunk History. We'll be
(11:50):
right back. The fact of the matter is, we may
never really know why the Roosevelts didn't have a tree.
Perhaps it's because Baby had one at her house and
(12:10):
the Roosevelts were there most Christmases, Or perhaps, as O'Brien wrote,
it was because the Roosevelt's favorite simplicity, the White House
was in decorated goddily for the season. Either or maybe,
as the Baltimore Sun posited in December nine, one, with
so many children and so many visitors, there was a
room for one and that Baby's tree would just have
to suffice. Or as Louis told Autlice Obscura, it could
(12:34):
be that Edith put the Kabbash on a tree. After all,
the Roosevelts had six kids and a veritable zoo of pets,
which included at one time or another, opossums flying squirrels
and kangaroo rats, a pig named Maud, a badger named Josiah,
a hyaena named Bill, a one legged rooster, guinea pigs
with names like Father O'Grady and Fighting Bob Evans, and
(12:55):
of course tomp Courts the Kitten, Algonquin the pony, and
Jack the Dog, among many many others to worry about.
But the most likely explanation seems to be that Roosevelt
loved the Christmas traditions of his childhood, and those traditions
didn't include a tree, so there was no tree, at
least not until two. What we do know is that
(13:17):
Archie's antics appear to have been met with delight, not
a lecture from the President, and may have even started
a new Roosevelt family tradition. In nineteen o six, Tier
wrote to Karin that Archie and Quentin had created a
variant on what is otherwise a strictly inherited form of
our celebration, for they fix up, or at least Archie
fixes up a special Christmas tree in Archie's room. While
(13:39):
tr and Edith were admiring Archie's tree, two kids snuck
out of the room to set up a small lighted
Christmas tree in their parents room. It had tr wrote
two huge stockings for Edith and myself. The next year
he wrote to Baby that there was a Christmas tree
of archies in as far as Society blog, Louis notes
that the casualness of Trs comments may suggest that by
(14:01):
this point a tree was actually expected, and perhaps that
fact is what led the kids to provide a tree
for their parents. They wanted to surprise tr once again.
Today Archie's exploits live on and Gary Hines's children's book
A Christmas Tree in the White House. And if this
episode has made you wonder whether you should go with
a real tree on Christmas, it's worth noting that at
(14:23):
least these days, Christmas trees are crops grown on farms.
According to the New York Times, it takes under a
decade for a tree to reach five or six ft,
and it's replaced with a new tree when a farmer
cuts it down. Christmas tree farming practices are sustainable, and
the trees do a lot for the environment before they're
cut down, and they have the potential to do more
after two if you compost them or donate them to
(14:44):
a zoo where they can be used as in Richmond
toys or snacks for animals. We'll be back next week
with a regular episode of History Versus. We hope you
have a great holiday. History Versus is hosted by me
Aaron mcarth. This episode was written by me, with fact
checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
(15:06):
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show was edited by Dylan Fagan and lowbra Ante.
To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt, check
out our website at mental fluss dot com, slash History Versus.
That's mental fluss dot com, slash hi s t o
r y vs. History Versus is the production of I
(15:26):
Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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