A Historic Home Buff’s Moment of Awe
Massachusetts woman shares how she helped deck the Official White House Christmas tree and other memorable spaces.
Editor’s note: It is First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 who is credited with establishing the selection of a theme for the Official White House Christmas tree. That year, Mrs. Kennedy chose a “Nutcracker Suite” theme that showcased handmade ornaments depicting toys, birds and angels from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” ballet, according to the White House Historical Association. And noted about the ornaments was how they were crafted by disabled volunteers and senior citizens throughout the country.
The tradition of enlisting the talents and dedication of volunteers, since then, has evolved into a highly competitive selection process. Some 12,000 people applied for the 100 or so slots available over the Thanksgiving holiday week when volunteers from across the United States and its territories descend on the White House to transform it for the holiday season in a matter of days.
East Wing Magazine spoke with a few of the 2025 volunteers who helped decorate the White House for the first Christmas season First Lady Melania Trump has hosted since returning to the White House for her husband’s second term—a season that also included fewer decorations for a scaled-back tour as a result of the demolition of White House East Wing to make way for President Trump’s planned White House Ballroom. Here is the second story in a series of one-on-one volunteer profiles.
The past was as much a part of life growing up for Erin O’Connor as was the present. The Bolton, Massachusetts, woman loves historic homes, grew up in historic homes and credits that fascination and her eventual degree in art history to her parents who spent her childhood restoring them.
So on the day after Thanksgiving when O’Connor, a mother of two grown children and the spouse of a retired United States Air Force service member, stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside the North Portico of the White House in Washington, D.C., with dozens of other volunteers gathered to decorate the first family’s home for Christmas, she was awestruck.
As they entered, she looked in every direction, trying to take it in. She recalls the reactions of people around her—audible gasps—as their pace slowed at the threshold.
“It’s just the architecture, the woodwork, is just absolutely beautiful,” O’Connor says of the iconic Neoclassical home designed by Irish-American architect James Hoban and constructed from 1792-1800. “It all hits you at once.”
O’Connor was one of more than 100 White House Christmas volunteer decorators chosen to create First Lady Melania Trump’s “Home Is Where the Heart Is,” 2025 theme based on the idea that home is a feeling of warmth and comfort regardless of location, especially when away from home.
The holiday theme was particularly moving for O’Connor.
“This means home is wherever the family is together, whether they are deployed or at a permanent duty station,” she says. “It also highlights the sacrifices and strength of the family members who remain, often bearing the sole responsibility for managing the household while their loved one is away.”
And it was an opportunity, she says, that amounted to more than the immediate tasks at hand—stringing lights and hanging ornaments. It was a chance to celebrate history and to be part of a national tradition that she knows is important to America. Having a few days now to reflect, O’Connor describes her three-day decorating spree inside the White House as nothing short of “surreal.”
To O’Connor’s surprise, a significant amount of work by the volunteers came down to hands-on crafting. Think actual do-it-yourself-like projects that most people looking to add a little flair to their Christmas trees could manage with materials from their local craft store, she says.
On her first day volunteering in the Blue Room where the Official White House Christmas tree is displayed, O’Connor and others from team “Twinkle,” helped transform the 18-foot, concolor fir selected from Korson’s Tree Farm in Sidney, Michigan, into the stately centerpiece of the holiday decor.
This year as a result of the demolition of the White House East Wing, the White House Christmas tree would serve twofold—honoring Gold Star families who lost an active-duty loved one and representing each of the country’s states and territories with trimmings and ornaments. The opportunity to decorate the Blue Room was particularly meaningful to O’Connor because her mother, whose brother died in the Vietnam War, is part of a Gold Star family.
O’Connor’s work began with wrapping and gluing about 200 repurposed, round ornaments with a rich, navy velvet fabric and then topping them with a hand-tied, cream-colored silk bow. And at the base of the tree, she helped paint gold stars that were glued on the box. Alternatively, the ornaments representing each state and territory were designed by a New York artist using 3-D printing. They featured the name of the state, its official bird and flower.
The crafty materials used “were made to look so amazing,” O’Connor says.
Also hard to fathom, is how the Blue Room tree, wrapped in 400,000 lights, took volunteers two-and-a-half days just to light. It was believed that one gentleman volunteer spent 9 hours in the tree lighting it properly.
In the nearby Green Room, which took on a whimsical design, volunteers glued domino tiles together in the shape of towers with roofs made from playing cards. And in the Red Room, which honored one of Mrs. Trump’s initiatives that supports children in foster care, volunteers spent hours gluing together 10,000 blue butterflies on wire segments for the tree and mantelpiece, giving the impression of butterflies in flight.
At one point, O’Connor recalls walking through the Red Room on her way to the State Dining Room when she stopped and stared at the finished tree.
“The way the butterflies move, as the air moves, is just eye catching,” she says. “It looks so elegant and gentle.”
By day three, O’Connor said there wasn’t much left to do except that she was sent to help create the Blue Room entryway garland and to decorate the Grand Staircase from where Mrs. Trump later descended to greet the volunteers during a reception the day before the White House reopened for public tours.
In the midst of it all, O’Connor caught a glimpse of a film crew from HGTV filming the behind-the-scenes decorating process. And then there were the other memorable moments like when the volunteers gathered for lunch—a taco bar and ice cream sundaes—in the State Dining Room.
“We were all just trying to soak in all in,” she says “We laughed, we worked hard [and] we shared stories,” she says.
But, it was the friendships O’Connor forged while working closely with what she described as a positive and patriotic group that included an event designer, two nurses, a teacher, a military veteran, two Gold Star moms, a firefighter, a world traveler, and a couple whose children recently enlisted in the Army. For three days, their intertwined yet unexpected paths to the White House are what O’Connor and her fellow volunteers hope binds their budding friendships for the long term. A chance meeting that, perhaps, will allow them to relive the history they crafted.