Melania Christmas

The First Lady of the supposedly United States, Melania Trump, unveiled  the Christmas 2017 decorations at the White House in this first holiday season of the Age of the Donald.  Melania's decorations include 53 Christmas trees, 71 wreaths, more than 18,000 lights and more than 12,000 ornaments.

Now, you'd think that our foreign-born First Lady (our first foreign-born First Lady since John Quincy Adams' wife Louisa), coming as she does from Slovenia, would bring a little homey Old World charm to the White House Christmas displays.

Think again!

The decorations are as cold and sterile as Melania's marriage.  Looking through this doorway, you feel as if you're entering the inner sanctum of a space station.

Step back, and you feel like you're standing in the middle of the atrium of one of her husband's skyscrapers.

This room looks so cold and empty that the presence of a single person makes it look even deader than it already is.  No cheer, no warmth, none of that stuff associated with Christmas. The decor along the East Colonnade, though, does bring Halloween to mind.

As white and unsettling as the President himself.

And if you think this looks scary already, it looks downright creepy when more dimly lit!

Michelle Obama's holiday decor for the East Colonnade invited you to come in and have some Christmas cookies.  Here, you'd be afraid to walk down the hall for fear of being kidnapped by a witch and thrown in an oven!  Melania wants to have you for tea?  Yes, my pretty, and you'll taste quite scrumptious with tea!

The decorations don't look any better in a brighter light.  In fact, they look even more sterile.

I've seen mausoleums with more warmth than this. This decor doesn't conjure up the sound of  Christmas carols, it recalls "The Immigrant Song," Led Zeppelin's song about Vikings conquering and plundering the Nordic landscape.  Valhalla, I am coming! 

The decor in the picture below has an air of familiarity to it, though.  It reminds me of being in the mall.  Now if she plays Mannheim Steamroller in the background, Melania will have the Paramus atmosphere down pat!  

I will give her this much credit; she did make the Red Room look very festive.

But when you have a room that's already painted in a cheerful color and adorned with paintings of Dolley Madison and of Angelica Van Buren, Martin Van Buren's pretty daughter-in-law - two beloved White House hostesses themselves - it's hard to screw up this room.  Heck, you couldn't decorate the Red Room for Christmas badly unless you tried extremely hard.  But then, Melania doesn't have the desire to try extremely hard at being First Lady.  

Gotta love the Nativity scene, though.

Ooh, look - they remembered to include black people!

It's nice to see the Nativity scene reinstated after the Obamas took it out of the White House Christmas decorations.  Oops!  Correction - the Obamas always had a Nativity scene.  But they probably didn't have one that looked like the birth of Jesus took place in a palace.  This looks just a little too opulent for the birth of a carpenter's son.

Don't look for a Menorah - the Trumps aren't encumbered by cultural sensitivity.  But Melania did remember the mistletoe! 

Just make sure soon-to-be Senator Moore and the President himself aren't standing under this when the White House hosts a holiday party for Congress!  Senator Franken?  Oh, he won't be there.  No Menorah, remember?

I'm sure Melania did her darnedest to produce some Christmas cheer in a house that hasn't seen much joy for most of the year, but it seems phony and insincere, much like the arguments in favor of the tax reform bill.  She's so cold and cheerless, even the sight of ballerinas, who danced at the White House to celebrate its Christmas decorations, didn't warm her heart.  Take a look at the official White House video for yourself; the ballerinas are dressed in white, have frozen smiles on their faces, and have their hair in buns tighter than their rear ends, yet they look like they're having more of a good time than Melania, who stares at them like a motorized-mannequin impersonator awaiting her cue.  See, I told you it was like Christmas at the mall! 

Very sad. The one time where Trump's penchant for gold made sense, and the White House dropped the ornament on this one.

My second choice for President in 2020 is Disney CEO Robert Iger, and not because I want to see the White House look like Disneyland in Christmas 2021.  No, I hope Iger runs because his wife is Willow Bay, the former Estée Lauder model and the anti-Melania.  If you look at Willow Bay's old Lauder ads from the eighties, particularly the Christmas ads, you'll notice the tasteful settings and dignified objets d'art in the background that look grand without being cold.  I'd like to think that some of the interior design schemes in those ads must have rubbed off on her.

And because her husband is Jewish, the holidays at the Iger White House would definitely include a Menorah. 

But, at least we now know that the war on Christmas is over.  Christmas lost.