As President Donald Trump prepares to celebrate his first White House Christmas — which spans a month of parties, receptions and public tours — the pageantry feels like little else in the nearly year-old administration: normal.

A most untraditional White House has even adopted “Time-Honored Traditions” as its decorative theme.


The Trumps will be using china selected by President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, “to display a traditional Christmas dinner,” according to Melania Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham.

They’ll attend Thursday’s lighting of the National Christmas Tree in the Ellipse, an event dating back to President Calvin Coolidge.

The White House is also continuing the tradition of hosting annual receptions, including one for the press on Dec. 1. Other events will include military families, the Secret Service, White House staff and members of Congress.

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The Trumps plan to host “around 20” such events, Grisham said.

“We are on par for the first year in previous administrations,” she added.

Sticking to tradition could lead to some uncomfortable comparisons for Trump, who likes to boast about the size of everything from his buildings to the hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico under his watch.

The White House debuted its decorations this week, which include 53 trees and 12,000 ornaments. In 2015, the Obama White House was decorated with 62 trees — including one in the Oval Office — and 70,000 ornaments.

Grisham says 25,000 visitors are expected to participate in public tours during the season.

Obama’s White House saw between 80,000 and 90,000 visitors, including parties and public tours, during 2016, according to Ellie Schafer, special assistant to the president under Obama and former director of the White House Visitors Office.

“The sheer number of people that go through the house is just enormous,” she said. “Every day was just magical.”

That Trump’s White House is approaching the holiday season in a fashion nearly identical to his predecessors underscores the myth of the supposed liberal “War on Christmas” – a longtime trope in conservative media that Trump echoed as a candidate and now as president.

“We’re saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” President Donald Trump declared in October at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, rousing the crowd of conservative Christians to applause.

In truth, no one ever stopped talking about Christmas in the White House.

“Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas,” Obama said in 2009, in his first taped Christmas address from the White House, seated with First Lady Michelle Obama before a decorated Christmas tree. Obama then launched into a speech celebrating the “message of peace and brotherhood that continues to inspire more than 2,000 years after Jesus’ birth” — hardly a secular message.

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” Obama opened his final Christmas address from the White House in 2016, sounding as he had in all eight Christmas addresses.

Obama also attended each of the national Christmas tree — you read that right: Christmas tree — lightings and hosted a “Christmas in Washington” reception at the White House with celebrity guests.

The Obama White House hosted the press for a “holiday reception” each December. Under Trump, the event is billed as both a “Holiday Reception” and a “Christmas Reception.”

Trump’s White House has also promoted various “holiday festivities,” and Melania Trump tweeted about preparations “to celebrate the holidays.”

“Holiday traditions are very important to us,” Melania Trump said in a statement.

And Trump himself, in a statement on Giving Tuesday, referred twice to the “holiday season,” exhorting Americans to donate to charities “including houses of worship.”

“Together,” the statement ended, “we can ensure that the blessings of this holiday season are shared around the world.”

