What a difference a year makes—especially when there is a president in exile. Those who publicly criticized the elegant Melania Trump for her White House Christmas decorations now owe her an abject apology.
Because, make no mistake, the White House decorations this year are underwhelming to say the least. The entire process apparently took only a week to assemble, and it shows. In many instances, the rooms are haphazardly outfitted. In some instances, it is not even clear the decorations celebrate Christmas.
The theme this year, allegedly, is “Gifts from the Heart” and “small acts of kindness.” Regrettably, I must report that the gifts are few, the heart is unkind, and the acts are most definitely small. We suppose these themes were chosen by Jill Biden, Ed.D. It is abundantly clear in examining them that good taste was not an object of Dr. Biden’s intensive study. Ace of Spades appropriately noted that the decor looks “trashy.” Quite a feat for the fishnet First Lady!
In addition to being sparse, the decorations this year range from unimaginative to downright ugly. Where to begin?
The East Wing entrance features giant red boxes with blue bows stacked in an unstable way to the top of the entablature with a giant red bow centered in front of it. A large white tag says “gift” and “heart” in the center of the bow above the door. The meaning of this as it relates to Christmas? Your guess is as good as any. I will go with it representing an administration out of balance and overwhelmed by a burgeoning debt crisis that threatens to topple the country. That is the Biden gift from the heart.
The East Colonnade, famous for Melania’s decorative symmetry dedicated to the religious significance of the season, is void except for the modernist blue disks that hang from the ceiling representing . . . I give up. As Cockburn at Spectator World observed, if kindergarten arts-and-crafts are your thing, then this is for you.
Yet, even children create things that have a message, and this has no discernible message. Decoration should, at a minimum, be intelligible and have some relationship to the meaning and purpose of the thing being celebrated. The White House assures us, however, that it is in the spirit of Christmas just as it assures us that Joe Biden is sentient.
According to the White House Christmas guidebook, “Frontline workers are also represented in the iridescent doves and shooting stars that illuminate the East Colonnade hallway, representing the peace and light brought to us by all the front-line workers and first responders during the pandemic.” In a certain light, you can see a gouache star painted on the blue disks, but in sunlight the star gets drowned out and disappears. Given that these decorations are placed in front of a window, at certain times of the day, this esoteric (at best) message, will be missed.
In any event, this messaging has nothing to do with Christmas. It is secular virtue signaling.
The disappearing stars are apropos in one way at least. We do see fewer frontline workers employed this holiday season because they refused to get the jab for rational reasons. I suppose the globalist Bidens only value their service if they are compliant. Certainly the opaque blue disks represent the blue Christmas of gloom filling the hearts of the first responders being forced to take an experimental drug that Alex Bereson noted might be responsible for higher death rates than the unvaxxed.
Moving on, the traditional gingerbread White House has been turned into yet another out of scale and unbalanced display. Buildings almost as big as the White House flank the sides: a hospital, fire station, and postal building are oversized in comparison. What is certainly a blunder of epic proportions is that among the other buildings in the display is included a police station. While Biden tepidly distanced himself from the “defund the police” movement, he has included them in the list of first responders who should be fired if they do not obey his dictates. And, of course, they are racist, too!
The height of audacity in the gingerbread display, however, is the inclusion of a warehouse, grocery store, and gas station. The supply chain is in shambles and prices for goods are increasing. Ships still loiter at sea waiting to dock. Grocery prices are also rising, if you can even find what you are looking for on the sometimes empty shelves, because grocers are rationing. And gas? Biden’s policy to make us dependent on others has not done the citizenry any favors.
This gingerbread display is as weak and fecklessas has been Biden’s drawdown of our gas production, forcing him to beg OPEC to pump more oil.
What exactly does this display represent except the reminder, during this hallowed season, you work, they eat. You will wear a mask; they will not, except when they are at a photo-op. You will comply; they will not. After all, your livelihood depends on you being a good subject and obeying your superiors.
While there are more traditional themes present in the decor this year, none of it enlightens or inspires. Nearly everything about the Biden White House Christmas is secular by design. While Jill Biden gave lip service to “faith, family, friendship” there is little apparent in the way of faith. Instead, they mean faith in community, family, and unity. Or do they? Stockings over the fireplace in one room only honor only the recognized Biden grandchildren, not the exiled one.
In the Trump White House, the religious significance of the season was either overt or cleverly subtle. In the Biden holiday horror show, God is nowhere to be found. Any mention of faith in the Biden White House is tied to the “community” of this world. Even the stars in the blue disks, assuming you can see them, do not represent the birth of a divine being. They are repurposed for the celebration of the compliant who followed the lockdown without question.
Our nation is soul sick. The regime occupying Washington reveals to a thoughtful public just how vapid and corrupt our elites have become. The New York Times wrote the quiet part out loud when it exclaimed the decorations this year look “normal.” What is normal to our globalist elites is neither traditional nor natural. What this means is that our elite classes are completely shot through with a cultish belief in man as god.
One example may suffice: the religious significance of the wreath which symbolizes eternal life of the soul, and the light typically present in the center of it represents the light of Jesus in a dark world. In the Vermeil Room, there is a wreath hanging in the window. But there is no light in the center. Instead, multi-color paint brushes fan out from the center overtaking almost the entirety of the wreath itself. This purposely wrecks the hallowed meaning of the wreath. Man is in the center. Man is creator, not God.
During Christmas we are to reflect on our nature and the salvation of man that came with the birth of Christ. We are to remember, following in the Jewish tradition of the holiday season of light, the recovery of the Second Temple under the Maccabean revolt. All of these things command our attention to miracles, which do not come from man, but only God. In ”The Matrix,” man is the author of new miracles, and through this, new horrors. But the only real miracle is something unexplained that comes from without man.
The White House Christmas decorations clumsily reveal that this administration does not care about the salvific power of God. Saint Gregory the Theologian tells us about Christmas: “This is what we are celebrating today: the Coming of God to man, that we might go forth, or rather that we might go back to God, that putting off the old man we might put on the new; and that we have died in Adam, so we might live in Christ.”
The present regime makes clear that we live in dark and serious times with unserious elites who lie to us about how smart they are.
This Christmas reminds us that an abiding faith will hold onto that dim, and flickering light that banishes the darkness.