Jill Biden Is Waging a Bad Bad Taste War against Christmas

I never took the Fox News set seriously when they riled up some fundamentalist fear, fire, and fury with their annual accusations of a War Against Christmas. Every year, mittens wring in winter wonderland worry as right-wingers prepare for a siege against Santa’s workshop. It’s as if every perfunctorily muttered, “Happy Holidays,” makes an elf drop dead. This year, though, I believe. There is a war being waged against Christmas and it’s happening inside the White House! Led into battle by First Lady Jill Biden, the Biden White House Christmas decorations are acts of taste terrorism, aesthetic war crimes against the North Pole that should be tried at the Hague!

Look–I don’t care about Hunter Biden smoking crack in a sensory deprivation chamber (and filming it) or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on hookers (and taking photos of most of that). I also don’t care about the classified documents in President Biden’s hoarder garage, placed next to a lampshade. I do, however, demand an independent investigation into why the Biden White House Christmas decorations are consistently heinous holiday eyesores!

Bear witness to this sugar plum fever dream video that Jill Biden inflicted on the public earlier this week with a deceptively cheerful caption, “A bit of magic, wonder, and joy brought to you by the talented tappers of Dorrance Dance, performing their playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite. Enjoy!” The video starts innocuously wholesome enough with a pretty Black woman dancer in a delightfully sequined outfit tapping her way down the White House’s East Wing hallway. Then…

AAAH!!

A gleefully menacing floral pajama-wearing man bursts out of a doorway with a giant purple flower attached to his head. He disappears.

OH GOD! What is THAT?!!

A genderqueer suit-wearing Lynchian rabbit-rat slinks across the hall. Don’t let it touch me!

After the jump scares, a dancer in a simple blue dress slides into center frame. For a moment, there is a feeling of relief as she doesn’t appear to have emerged out of a Nyquil-fueled hallucination. Suddenly, her mouth flies open, agape in apparent wonderment, as she enters a series of rooms backward. Presumably, she’s attempting to convey childlike awe, but the expression is too exaggerated, too unhinged to communicate joy. Instead, she looks possessed—by the spirit of Saint Nick perhaps? If Jordan Peele ever does a holiday film, she absolutely must be cast in a starring role.

Now, it would be unfair for me to pretend as if the entire video was akin to a holiday haunted house. There is a scene in which the sequined dancer does a duet with a man in a black and silver uniform (the Nutcracker?) in the Grand Foyer. This is quite sweet, a warm fuzzy feeling that is quickly shattered as the Flower Man lunges into the frame yet again. Holy fuck! Go away! Shoo! The dance, then, spirals out into a bizarro cast of characters, including a strange Elvis-like boogying sequence with the bunny-rat king (non-binary royal?). What the hell am I watching?

Unsurprisingly, the Internet had a whole lot to say about this video. And naturally, the right-wingers took their response too far, using it as an excuse to dig into the antiracist resources on Dorrance Dance’s website and pearl-clutch about other Biden holiday celebrations. This led to an unintentionally hilarious tweeted mash-up of footage of Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty twerking on the White House lawn to the onlooking Easter Bunny family’s delight and trans activist Rose Montoya acting bad and jiggling her tits on Pride. I wish the Biden White House was as fun as that prude-produced tweet makes it seem! Unfortunately, it’s not. Recall Jill Biden’s October insult against The B-52’s, nixing their live performance during a state dinner for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Why? Apparently, “Rock Lobster” would have been inappropriate when “so many are facing sorrow and pain,” presumably a generic reference to the October 7 attacks in Israel. Well, Gaza is still being leveled, Hamas still has hostages, and yet apparently, this waking Nutcracker nightmare was okay!

Much of the Internet’s fury focused on Dorrance Dance’s, uh, unique take on The Nutcracker, but I see the problem differently. The video would not have been anywhere near as alarming if it didn’t also showcase the utter hollowness of Jill Biden’s 2023 White House Christmas decorations. I could have swallowed my fear of the Flower Man and Rat Person if they weren’t leaping at me in a hallway that appeared to be papered with cheap and flimsy red, white, and green candy cane trim and hanging hard candy decorations stripped and stolen from a long-forgotten holiday display in a dead mall. Similarly, I would have rolled my eyes at the Rat Person’s lame air-guitaring but not seethed with hatred about the atrocious under-construction Christmas trees, random tiny furniture, and a ginormous cartoon Nutcracker window decal in the State Dining Room, which looked like a Midwestern mom went on a Chardonnay bender and woke up with a drool-stained Oriental Trading Company catalog and a hefty credit card bill.

I know what you’re thinking: Emily, why are you being such a Grinch? Well, the truth is I’ve been working myself up into a fa-la-la-la-lather about the Biden White House decorations for years now and this video provides the perfect excuse to finally rant. And because I recoiled in horror a few weeks before at the initial unveiling of the 2023 decorations, I know that there are a few rooms that mercifully were not fully on display in this video. One is the “Sweet Shop” in the China Room—perhaps the worst room of them all. The White House website describes it as “piles of cooking supplies and baking ingredients remind guests of familiar recipes that bring generations of families together year after year during the holidays.” Except in the photo I’ve seen, all the macarons, all the frosted cakes, all the gingerbread men resemble pastel plaster sculptures dustily dragged out of the Toys R Us storeroom every December. Yum! Look closely and find the illustrated view of the Washington Monument and the dome of (what I assume to be) the Jefferson Memorial, resembling a dick and balls!

Then, there is the Library, which takes its intention to reference bedtime stories literally by shoving a tiny bed over in the corner of the room as if it’s been bad. Who sleeps there? Hunter?

And Jill probably assumed nobody would be tacky enough to critique her Gold Star Christmas tree, with stars bearing the names of the military dead. But, why is the tree so chaotic?! Why are these stars so enormous, like laminated paper pinned to a kindergarten bulletin board? Why does the tree appear as if a bunch of trash got lodged in its branches during a windstorm? And lest you think this is just the annual aesthetic of the Gold Star Christmas tree–it’s not. A quick Google down memory lane confirmed that the Gold Star trees from the Obama years were quite elegant and solemn as seen in 2012’s red, white, and blue tree with small etched gold stars.

I should note Jill Biden began her War on Christmas as soon as the family hit the White House. The first year was spent marring the East Wing entrance with this ho-ho-horrendous pile of presents. I mean, what the fuck is this?!

I can only assume merry malicious intent here. Surely, with Joe as Vice President, Jill saw Michelle’s consistently gorgeous and nostalgic decorations—lush trees, shimmering ornaments—most resting on heartwarmingly traditional aesthetics. Even when they got silly with it, like the snowmen in 2016, they were adorable and properly placed rather than shoved into a corner like a long-forgotten haul from Home Goods. In contrast, there is just something missing in Jill’s decorations and it’s not easy to articulate why. On the surface, the holiday aesthetic is there, but it’s lacking magic, wonder, and joy, ironically the stated theme of this year’s design. In this way, Jill’s decorations are perfect representations of a neoliberal Christmas. It’s all the sweets and the decorations that money can buy, but ultimately, it’s soulless. There’s no emotional weight to it, just a strange gaping void of holiday cheer.

This is not to say all the former White House Christmas decorations had joy. Melania Trump’s certainly did not. Still, out of her own anger and frustration with having to give a fuck about Christmas stuff, she achieved perhaps the most memorable decorations in our nation’s history: an elegantly spooky Argento Christmas! Blood red Suspiria trees! Skeleton-like winter forests! I want more Melania Christmas! What existentially frightening theme will she choose next?!

John Waters frequently talks about the need to understand the difference between good bad taste and bad bad taste. I never fully understood until I considered the Christmas décor of the last few presidencies: The Obama White House is good taste, the Trump White House is good bad taste, and the Biden White House is bad bad taste. Now, I should note not even our preeminent filth elder can take partisan politics out of his aesthetic judgments. In a recent interview, he maligned Melania’s singular holiday flair: “There’s not even good bad taste anymore because Melania’s Christmas decorations ruined it forever. They were so horrible! You couldn’t describe them and they weren’t funny. That’s the end of good bad taste.”

Oh, lighten up, John!

Hell, I don’t even want to return to a White House Christmas with good taste. Bring on more good bad taste! Jill has at least one more Christmas to go—she can still make up for her previous sins against Santa. In the spirit of the season, I’m willing to help. Imagine: As many blow-ups as you can fit on the White House lawn! A Clark Griswold amount of Christmas lights! Neons! Elvis ornaments! A propped-up hungover Santa with sunglasses and a smiley face scribbled on a gallon milk jug like the one that sits across from my apartment at the 9^th Street Community Garden! Better yet, Hunter as Santa! Call me, Jill, I have ideas!