THE PRESIDENCY: Joys of the Season

White House mail piled higher & higher. The larder bulged with Christmas gifts of plum pudding, wild turkey, venison, duck, pheasant and guinea hen. Tinseled wreaths filled the White House windows with color. Outside, the national Christmas tree towered over the frozen south lawn.

Despite all this, and more holiday wonders to come, Bess Truman and daughter Mary Margaret had already left Washington for home in Independence, Mo. Harry Truman, too, would fly there on the morning of the 25th, after lighting the tree and addressing the nation by radio on Christmas Eve. In Independence, he would spend most of his first Presidential Christmas as he has done for decades—eating three big dinners: one each with his 93-year-old mother, his mother-in-law, Mrs. David W. Wallace, 83; and his aunt, Mrs. Margaret Truman Noland, 96. But the President would not need any sodium bicarb; he is a moderate eater.

Clearing his desk for the holidays, the President had:

¶ Pinned Medals of Merit (Civilian equivalent of the D.S.M.) on ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Deputy Petroleum Administrator Ralph K. Davies.

¶ Appointed a fact-finding board to study the U.A.W. strike against General Motors. The appointees: North Carolina Supreme Court Judge Walter P. Tracy, WLB Chairman Lloyd K. Garrison, Kansas State College President Milton Eisenhower (younger brother of General Ike). ¶ Appointed a six-man delegation, headed by Circuit Court Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson, of Houston, to an Anglo-American committee which will investigate the Arab-Jewish deadlock in Palestine. ¶ Paid a pre-Christmas visit to wounded veterans in the Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Army's Walter Reed Hospital. ¶ Put balding, affable Wilson Wyatt, ex-Mayor of Louisville, into the hot spot of U.S. housing expediter.

Harry Truman also found time to accept a life membership in the Kansas City Chapter of the National Sojourners, chat with visiting Kiwanians, receive a photograph of himself attending the Washington banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, and bandy civilities with such characters as Mississippi's Representative Rankin and Missouri's Senator Briggs, who had little to do with matters of state. Full of the Christmas spirit, Harry Truman still liked to see everybody.