Melania Trump dunked on Christmas decor — like my dad has been doing for years
Melania Trump. Image by Getty
By Irene Katz Connelly October 2, 2020
My family is an interfaith one, so we have a lot of holiday rituals between us. But no tradition is more hallowed than my father’s complaints about other people’s over-the-top Christmas decorations.
As long as bloated Santas and sleighs profane his neighborhood, my father can go nowhere without remarking on the collapse of separation between church and state and the imminent demise of secular humanism. A lapsed Catholic, he sees these decorations as offenses against taste, democracy and the humble Jesus he abandoned but still kind of likes, a rabble-rouser who urged his followers to sell their possessions and give to charity, not expend their disposable income on blow-up creches. No matter how far I venture from home, when the first snow falls I can rely on my father to inform me that Jesus probably wasn’t born in December, that chain stores have transformed the holiday into a spectacle of mass consumption and that it would be a “public service” to cut the cords on every inflatable reindeer in town.
On Friday, my father received some news even more alarming than President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis: the revelation that Melania Trump, who also tested positive for the virus, shares his disdain for Christmas cheer.
On Thursday, CNN aired several 2018 conversations between Melania and her one-time confidante, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. (Let us note that Wolkoff, a Jewish entertainment executive who secretly recorded the conversations, is releasing them just in time to promote her new tell-all about the First Lady, “Melania and Me.”) In the leaked recordings, Melania expressed uncensored frustration with the “brassy vulgarity and commercialism” of modern Christmas decorations.
Or at least, that’s how my dad put their mutual complaint when contacted by text for comment. This is what Melania actually had to say about the admittedly onerous task of designing the White House’s Christmas installations: “I’m working… my a** off on the Christmas stuff,” she said. “Who gives a f*** about Christmas stuff and decorations?”
In secretly recorded audio, Melania Trump says about reporters asking her about kids separated at border: “Give me a fucking break.” She assails the “liberal media,” says she doesn’t want to do a story on Fox, and adds, “Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations?” pic.twitter.com/Ia2U2WmzN5
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 2, 2020
As a person who grew up in a house with my father, I’ve heard versions of this question asked many times before. (Asked for his thoughts on this link to the First Lady, my father described the situation as an “interesting coincidence” and reiterated that acceptable Christmas decorations include candles in windows and “maybe a string of lights.”)
Melania’s comments could strike a chord for many others as well. If you’re a member of a religious minority or just a separation of church and state enthusiast, you’ve probably asked yourself something similar while walking through a public building decorated with a Christmas tree or allegedly “non-denominational” pine garlands. If you’re a woman who watched generations of accomplished and formidable First Ladies devote their time to hanging Christmas lights, you might be pleased to see someone point out that the labor they’re expected to perform cheerfully can be tiresome and boring. If Melania wasn’t standing by a man who campaigns on the so-called “war on Christmas” and frequently resorts to misogynistic language, it might almost seem like she was critiquing the gendered duties of political spouses or the tendency of public institutions to center Christianity in a nation that is increasingly religiously diverse.
But she was standing by such a man, and there may be another, simpler reason why Melania doesn’t vibe with Christmas cheer. After all, the holiday is rooted in a story about a young family seeking refuge in an unfamiliar land whose inhabitants are deeply unwilling to provide it.
Melania’s Christmas comments followed on the heels of a rant about the effect that the Trump administration’s policy of family separation at the United States-Mexico border was having on her, personally. Of questions posed to her about the policy, she remarked, “They said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f**king break.”
Melania went on to kvetch that she’d tried to reunite one (yes, one!) separated mother and child, apparently in hopes of positive media coverage, but abandoned the project because of bureaucratic impediments.
While Melania was annoyed by what she perceived as biased treatment from the media (apparently, only Fox was interested in covering the proposed feel-good story), she wasn’t too worried about the family she could have brought together. She argued to Wolkoff that kids stranded without their parents in detention centers widely declared inhumane actually fared better than they would have in their native countries. Here’s how she summed up the situation: “The kids, they said, ‘Wow, I will have my own bed, I will sleep on my own bed?’”
Given that most opponents of the family separation policy are also opponents of President Trump, the recordings are currently being touted as a potential affront to his religious base. It’s difficult to gauge their potential effect: in the past, Christian supporters have been unswayed by the abundant evidence that the president is not a religious person.
It might be fun to hear such irreverent tidbits from a couple who have repeatedly promised to end the scourge of non-denominational holiday greetings. But her dissatisfaction with the burdens imposed on her doesn’t make her a champion of religious freedom, any more than her reluctance to hold her husband’s hand indicates disagreement with his policies. If Melania believes that religious symbols have no place in the White House, I wholeheartedly agree with her. But, even as a Jew, I do find meaning in Christmas, a holiday which — when stripped of pomp and circumstance by someone like my father — has a deeply human core.
And, based on these conversations, I don’t think she does.
Irene Katz Connelly is an editorial fellow at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
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