Washington: This year’s Christmas ornament from the White House Historical Association honors the tradition of displaying a gingerbread model of the executive mansion as part of the holiday decorations at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The 2022 ornament — a gingerbread house shaped like the mansion — honors President Richard Nixon’s administration. It was first lady Patricia Nixon who first put a gingerbread house on display in the State Dining Room for the holidays. That was long before the talented White House pastry chefs began making hundred-pound replicas of the executive mansion.
Now, holiday time at the White House would feel incomplete without one.
“Initially these were A-frame houses, but now they are actual White Houses, gingerbread houses built in the shape of the White House,” Stewart McLaurin, president of the association, told The Associated Press in an interview. The privately funded association began selling the popular annual White House Christmas ornament in 1981.
The 2022 ornament shows the north and south fronts of a gingerbread White House that is decorated with white piping, red-and-white candies, gumdrops and candy canes. Each ornament comes with a booklet on the history of that particular presidency, and this year’s is gingerbread-scented.
