Page 49 - JOA 12-20

Figure 10 Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 15

Figure 13

Room, McKnight turned his attention to the Blue
Room in 1995. In 1996 he rendered the Green Room
in the same whimsical manner. Socks, the Presidential
cat, appears in all three views (Fig. 12). American
Greetings was printing 300,000 cards annually for the
White House.
Two of these same rooms had already provided the Figure 14
themes for Ronald Reagan’s cards in 1982 and 1983 (Fig.
13). Gibson Greeting Cards was granted the opportunity
to produce 65,000 copies of James Steinmeyer’s faithfully
detailed watercolor of the Red Room. Hallmark resumed its Figure 16 Figure 17
customary role the following year when asked to provide 100,000
copies of Mark Hampton’s complementary view of the Green
Room. Artist Cindi Holt returned to the Red Room for George
W. Bush’s 2004 card (Fig. 14).
Fig. 15 brings us into the seldom-seen private upstairs quarters
at the White House. For their 1991 card, George and Barbara
Bush invited artist Kamil Kubik, a Czechoslovakian refugee, to
depict their personal family Christmas arrangements in the
second-floor Yellow Oval Room. With the following year’s
card, the same artist takes us outside for an impressionistic view
of the National Christmas Tree glowing with patriotic colors
(Fig. 16).
A hint of a more somber White House Christmas marked George W. Bush’s first official card only
three months after the September 11, 2001 attacks (Fig. 17). Pennsylvania artist Adrian Martinez
depicted several wrapped packages left unopened beneath an eagle sconce and Mary Cassatt’s painting,
Young Mother and Two Children, in the mansion’s private second floor corridor. This card’s message
included a Biblical quote for the first time.
White House interiors appear on several other Presidential Christmas cards as well.
Most have presented the more familiar public spaces–the East Room, State Dining
Room, and even the Oval Office. For Barack Obama’s 2011 card, California artist
Mark Matuszak focused on Presidential pooch Bo enjoying a fireplace in the cozy Figure 18
White House Library (Fig. 18). The entire First Family—even the dog—“signed” this
card. In keeping with the times, its reverse certifies that the
card was printed on recycled paper by union workers.
Mid-century Presidents sent out several tens of
thousands of cards, as compared with the several
hundred thousand mailed by recent administrations each
year. As President, LBJ had to stick a nickel stamp on
each of his greetings. Obama’s cards carried almost ten
times as much postage (49 cents). The substantial costs
of designing, printing, addressing, and sending
all those holiday messages are borne by the
President’s political party. After all, modern cynics
perhaps justifiably consider the White House Christmas card as just one more tool in the political arsenal.

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