The White House hasn’t always marked the Festival of Lights with menorah lightings and musical performances.
Official Christmas celebrations date back to the 1800s, but celebrating Hanukkah at the White House is a fairly recent development in US history.
President John Adams hosted the first White House Christmas party in 1800, and President Calvin Coolidge held the first National Christmas Tree lighting in 1923. Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of choosing a theme for the White House Christmas decorations in 1961.
Still, the first official White House Hanukkah reception wasn’t held until 2001.
Take a look at the fascinating history of how the White House Hanukkah party came to be.
President Jimmy Carter was the first president to recognize Hanukkah by lighting a menorah in 1979.
The menorah lighting was held on the Ellipse, a lawn south of the White House.
The secretary of the interior under Carter initially refused to issue a permit for a menorah on the White House lawn, citing the First Amendment, The Washington Post reported. But Stu Eizenstat, one of Carter’s advisors, argued that the National Christmas Tree’s permit should also be denied on the same grounds, and the event was allowed to proceed.
Since then, every US president has marked Hanukkah in one way or another.
A delegation of rabbis brought President Ronald Reagan a menorah during a Hanukkah visit in 1984.
Reagan maintained contact with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement, throughout his presidency, even declaring his 80th birthday a National Day of Reflection, according to Chabad.org.
President George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush learned to play dreidel, a traditional Hanukkah game, in 1990.
Bush invited children to light Hanukkah candles and play dreidel at the Old Executive Building, which sits adjacent to the White House.
President Bill Clinton also celebrated Hanukkah by hosting groups of children in the Oval Office.
Children from local schools and synagogues were welcomed into the Oval Office to light the menorah and play dreidel with Clinton.
President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush hosted the first White House Hanukkah party in 2001. It was the first time a menorah lighting ceremony had been held in the White House residence.
The Bushes invited members of their staff and their children to participate in the ceremony, according to the archived Bush White House’s website. The menorah was lit in the Booksellers’ room on the ground floor, and a kosher buffet was served upstairs, The New York Times reported.
“Tonight, for the first time in American history, the Hanukkah menorah will be lit at the White House residence,” Bush said at the ceremony. “It’s a symbol that this house may be a temporary home for Laura and me, but it’s the people’s house, and it belongs to people of all faiths.”
The White House kitchen was made kosher for Hanukkah celebrations starting in 2005.
Making the White House kitchen kosher involves Saran Wrap, tin foil, and vats of boiling water to cover and purify non-kosher surfaces. The chefs use only certified kosher ingredients.
Matt Nosanchuk served as the White House’s associate director of public engagement and liaison to the American Jewish community during Obama’s second term. He told Business Insider that there used to be separate tables for kosher and non-kosher food at Bush’s Hanukkah parties, but one year, the labels were accidentally switched.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, a Chabad rabbi in Washington, DC, who worked closely with the White House staff to prepare kosher food, suggested making the entire reception kosher to avoid confusion in the future, Nosanchuk said.
“Apparently, President Bush said, ‘Do whatever you need to do, it’s fine,’ and Rabbi Shemtov was like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to stay out of the kitchen for 24 hours before the party,’” Nosanchuk said.
Bush also began inviting different Jewish choirs and a cappella groups to perform at the event.
The Kol Zimra a cappella choir performed at a menorah lighting ceremony before the White House Hanukkah reception in 2004.
President Barack Obama continued hosting the White House Hanukkah party every year. In 2013, the party was split into two receptions: one in the afternoon and one in the evening.
The two identical receptions were hosted on the same day, so that the White House kitchen only has to be made kosher once.
“Given how crowded the previous parties had become, they decided to have two,” Nosanchuk said.
That was also the year Thanksgiving coincided with Hanukkah. Obama was presented with a turkey-shaped menorah known as a “menurkey.”
In 2013, then-10-year-old Asher Weintraub invented a “menurkey,” a menorah shaped like a turkey. He raised over $48,000 on Kickstarter to produce and sell them.
“Of course, I said we gotta invite this kid to the White House Hanukkah party,” Nosanchuk said. “We didn’t use the menurkey onstage, but we made sure the kid was up front on the rope line so that he could say hello to President Obama and present him with a menurkey. And President Obama loved the menurkey.”
Obama continued the tradition of inviting college and professional a cappella groups to sing at the event.
Mike Boxer performed with the Jewish a cappella group Six13 at the White House Hanukkah reception in 2016. He told Business Insider the performers usually sing in the foyer outside the party for about an hour, welcoming guests as they enter, and then have a private audience with the president and first lady.
Before meeting the Obamas, Boxer and his group were told to prepare 45 seconds of a song to perform for them. They chose a snippet from “A Hamilton Chanukah,” a medley of songs from the Broadway musical “Hamilton” rewritten with Hanukkah-themed lyrics.
Boxer said that their private concert featured some unexpected guests.
“We look over, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor are peering through the door,” he said. “Barack Obama goes, ‘Come in, come in.’ One of them said, ‘I love this stuff.’”
Notable American Jewish leaders and rabbis were also invited to deliver remarks at the two ceremonies.
In his public engagement role at the White House, Nosanchuk was responsible for the guest list of the Hanukkah reception. Every year, the list was built from scratch to include as many new people as possible.
“I went out of my way to invite people who had never been before, who had done interesting and important and valuable work in the Jewish community or in their broader community,” he said. “There were a wide array of constituencies and groups and individuals who we wanted to engage with and touch during these holiday receptions. The Hanukkah receptions were a subset of that larger group.”
Mordechai Levovitz attended the White House Hanukkah party twice during Obama’s presidency and was impressed with the event’s broad representation of the Jewish community.
Levovitz is the founder of Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit serving LGBTQ+ youth from Orthodox, Hasidic, and Sephardic homes. He was invited as a representative of the Jewish LGBTQ+ community, along with other leaders of Jewish LGBTQ+ organizations.
“It was really nice to see great LGBTQ representation there,” he said of the Hanukkah parties he attended. “I felt seen. I saw leaders of every Jewish LGBTQ organization there, and they saw me.”
He told Business Insider that the White House knows how to throw a good Hanukkah party.
“Any Orthodox Jew knows that kosher food can really go either way, especially kosher catering. This caterer does an amazing job,” he said. “There’s a room with a huge smorgasbord of food, and then there’s a cutting board on the side giving out the lamb chops, and that’s where the line is. They are delicious.”
President Donald Trump continued hosting Hanukkah receptions at the White House during his first term, but didn’t invite Democratic lawmakers.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, is Jewish. She converted before marrying her husband, Jared Kushner.
The New York Times reported in 2017 that Trump broke with tradition by excluding Democratic lawmakers from the guest list of what had previously been a bipartisan event.
In 2020, the Trump White House held indoor Hanukkah parties despite CDC warnings against large gatherings. Trump only attended the evening reception.
Then-chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, told Business Insider in a statement that masks would be required and provided at the events, hand-sanitizing stations would be set up, chefs would serve food from behind plexiglass barriers, and that the guest lists were “smaller.” She did not respond to Business Insider’s questions about the exact number of invited guests.
The Times of Israel reported that Trump attended only the evening Hanukkah reception, where he falsely claimed that with the help of “certain very important people, if they have wisdom and if they have courage, we are going to win this election.” Joe Biden had already been declared the winner the previous month.
Three days after the party, vice chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee Tom Mountain was hospitalized with COVID-19, which he attributed to his attendance at the event.
“Let’s put it this way: When I went down to Washington, DC, for the White House Hanukkah event, I was perfectly fine,” Mountain told NBC affiliate WJAR. “And three days later after that event, I was in the hospital … ready to be put on a lifesaving ventilator.”
In 2021, second gentleman Doug Emhoff led the menorah lighting at the White House Hanukkah party and spoke about his Jewish heritage.
“To think that today, I’m here before you as the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president celebrating Hanukkah, in the people’s house, it’s humbling, and it’s not lost on me that I stand before you all on behalf of all the Jewish families and communities out there across our country,” Emhoff said. “I understand that, and I really appreciate it.”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency‘s Ron Kampeas reported that invitations to the in-person White House Hanukkah party on December 1 were sent out a week before the event, and that holiday plans took shape relatively last-minute due to COVID-19 concerns surrounding in-person events.
In 2022, the Bidens added a Hanukkah menorah to the White House Christmas decorations for the first time.
Located in the Cross Hall, the menorah was built by White House carpenters using leftover wood from a Truman-era White House renovation.
In addition to the regular White House Hanukkah gathering on Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff hosted the first-ever Hanukkah party at the vice president’s residence.
Trump once again hosted the White House Hanukkah reception in 2025 when he returned for his second non-consecutive term.
“As president of the United States, I will always support Jewish Americans,” Trump said during the celebration, “and I will always be a friend and a champion of the Jewish people.”
Outside the White House, menorah lightings are still held on the Ellipse, and the event has continued to grow in scale.
The National Menorah is now a 30-foot-tall structure that requires a lift from a cherry picker to light.
This year’s National Menorah Lighting, broadcast on C-SPAN, took place on December 14.
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