Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. President, is a larger-than-life historical figure. So are the myths and tales that abound about his exploits. In the village of Oyster Bay on the north shore of Nassau County, his presence is palpable–and it’s embedded in the places that are still a part of the everyday life of its residents.
This is where he and his family lived for part of the year, where they worshipped, and enjoyed the peaceful nature surrounding them.
The Christ Church of Oyster Bay is still there; the building where he had his office while President is now a restaurant, many of the stores that he patronized and where he chatted up the locals all around town–Roosevelt was known to be a tireless talker– are still in business. And the house, Sagamore Hill, which became the summer White House once he was elected, is not only still there, but it’s open to visitors for most of the year–as is the pet cemetery where their menagerie of pets: dogs, guinea pigs, horses, and even a badger, are buried.
Laura Cinturati is a museum technician at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site who has studied the Roosevelts’ lives at Sagamore Hill and recently The Patch asked her about the Roosevelts’ Christmas traditions. One of the most well-known stories about Teddy Roosevelt — about him opposing the cutting-down of live trees for Christmas because he was a conservationist — may be apocryphal, she told Patch, but there are plenty of others that ring true.
“After the presidency, there are references that the Roosevelts had a large cedar Christmas tree cut down from their own property set up in the North Room,” she explained.
Roosevelt’s son Archie, surprised the family in 1902 by setting up a secret tree in a White House closet. The surprise tree had presents for each member of the family on it, as well as for the family pets: a dog, a kitten and a pony. From then on the Roosevelts continued a tradition of constructing a second, hidden tree in the years after.
On snowy Christmas Eve, the Roosevelts would travel by sleigh to Christ Church in Oyster Bay. When the parishioners sang the hymn “Christmas on the Bay,” Roosevelt’s favorite, he mistakenly thought it was about Christmas in Oyster Bay, Cinturati said.
A lot of the early 20th century traditions sound similar to what happens in 2022 family Christmases: On Christmas morning the Roosevelt children would “pile into” the parents’ bed and open stockings hung on a fireplace mantel. The kids got presents like riding boots, train sets, books, dolls, or even small rifles.
The children of the staff got presents too, and the Roosevelts were known to visit neighbors and families in need in Oyster Bay with baskets.
Teddy Roosevelt always visited nearby Cove Neck School with presents for the students. Some accounts say he dressed as Santa Claus on these trips. The Library of Congress has a video that shows Roosevelt visiting Cove Neck School or Oyster Bay neighbors—though not dressed as Santa.
Christmas dinner had dishes like turkey, roast suckling pig, vegetables and desserts like Sagamore Hill Sand Tarts. “Christmas was an occasion of literally delirious joy,..I never knew anyone else to have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly for my own children” Archie Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography.
Teddy Roosevelt died in that house. On the last day of his life, January 6, 1919–ironically right after Christmas– he remarked to his wife Edith, “I wonder if you know how I love Sagamore Hill!”
