WASHINGTON — First lady Jill Biden welcomed guests from Schuylkill County to the White House on Monday as she accepted a concolor fir grown on Evergreen Acres Christmas Tree Farm near Auburn.
The 18 ½-foot-tall, 12-foot-wide tree was selected to be the official White House Christmas tree and stand in the Blue Room.
“I think it will fill the whole room,” Evergreen Acres co-owner Paul Anthony Shealer said.
“I think it will fill our hearts, for sure,” Biden replied during a brief reception at 3 p.m. at the White House’s north portico.
As The President’s Own Marine Band played “O Tannenbaum,” Clydesdale horses pulled a carriage carrying the tree up the driveway to the north portico, where the first lady emerged to inspect the evergreen and greet Paul and Pam Shealer and their family.
“I love the tree. How do you like the tree?” Biden said when someone in the crowd called out asking what she thought of the evergreen.
“This is the family that gave us the tree. They’re from Pennsylvania,” she said and motioned the Shealers to come and pose for photos with her in front of the carriage. She asked Shealer if he would like to tell the almost 200 guests media and White House officials something about the tree.
“Well, it is a concolor fir. It was planted about 20 years ago and it was in a patch of trees that we ended up harvesting and there was something special about this tree so we decided to keep it just for this event. And lo and behold, we were successful enough to win the national competition last year and that gave us the honor to put this tree here at the White House,” he said.
The first lady was accompanied by National Guard and Army mom, Kelly Hokanson, the spouse of the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Daniel Hokanson. Her grandson, Beau Biden Jr., son of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, was also in tow, his grandmother holding the 2-year-old by the hand as he pet the horses and observed the small crowd assembled for the event.
Evergreen Acres is the 2022 Grand Champion Grower in the annual National Christmas Tree Association’s annual contest.
Representatives from The White House, including Dale Haney, grounds superintendent, and chief usher Robert Downing, visited Evergreen Acres on Oct. 10 to select the tree. For this year, the Shealer family had marked three trees — two Douglas firs and the concolor fir — as having White House potential. Due to a 20-foot height limit, the concolor, which is 20 years old, was chosen. It was cut down Nov. 15 and wrapped in a protective covering Thursday to avoid wind damage, before being shipped to Washington.
This is the second time the farm was selected to supply the tree. In 2000, then-owners Paul Alan Shealer and Sharon Shealer presented a tree to first lady Hillary Clinton in a ceremony at the White House.
In 2019, Larry Snyder from Mahantongo Valley Farms in Pitman presented the Christmas tree to first lady Melania Trump.
Every year, the historic room’s chandelier is removed to accommodate the Christmas tree’s full height.
Paul Alan and Sharon Shealer, who began competing for the nation’s tree in 1979, turned over the ownership of Evergreen Acres Tree Farms to Paul Anthony and Pam Shealer this year. Along with 2000, the Shealers had also been named Reserve Champion in 2008, supplying a tree for the residence of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Decades of tradition
This year marks the 57th time a member of the National Christmas Tree Association presented the official White House Christmas tree, a tradition begun under Lady Bird Johnson in 1966.
The first known Christmas tree in the White House was placed upstairs in the Second Floor Oval Room (then used as a family parlor and library) in 1889 during the Benjamin Harrison administration. It was decorated with candles for the Harrison…
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