Melania Trump is already thinking ahead to the holidays as she faces her first Christmas season since returning to the White House.
Nearly seven years after she was secretly recorded expressing frustration about her Christmas duties, Melania has once again taken on the task of designing the White House’s holiday decor. On Oct. 8, the first lady shared a brief video on X featuring a gold-themed Christmas setup with delicate ornaments and leafy garlands.
“Christmas meeting in the @WhiteHouse,” her office wrote in the post, accompanied by a sparkle emoji. The official 2025 holiday theme has yet to be announced.
White House Christmas decorations have long been a subject of public fascination during Donald Trump’s presidency.
In her first year as first lady, Melania opted for a traditional look, but she made a bold statement in 2018 by installing 40 blood-red conical Christmas trees throughout the White House, which she described as “American Treasures.”
According to a White House statement at the time, the red color represented the “pales, or stripes, found in the presidential seal designed by our Founding Fathers” and symbolized “valor and bravery.”
The striking visual quickly became an internet sensation, inspiring countless memes that compared the decorations to the red cloaks from The Handmaid’s Tale and even the torrent of blood from The Shining.
Melania later defended her creative choices, saying that everyone has “a different taste” in the modern era.
“I think they look fantastic. I hope everybody will come over and visit it. In real life, they look even more beautiful,” she said. “You are all welcome to visit the White House, the people’s house.”
However, Christmas decorating wasn’t always a source of joy. In a 2018 audio recording leaked two years later, Melania could be heard venting about the responsibility that came with the role.
“I’m working … my ass off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f— about the Christmas stuff and decorations?” she said in the recording, which was released by CNN in 2020. “But I need to do it, right?”
She continued, “OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f—— break,” apparently frustrated by the criticism surrounding her husband’s family separation policies at the southern border.
Years later, Melania seems prepared to take on the seasonal role once more. According to friends, political insiders, and members of the Mar-a-Lago Club, she plans to fulfill her traditional first lady duties—though in her own way.
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“Melania will do what she is asked as first lady but under her own terms, and that includes decorating the White House for the Christmas holidays,” said a social source in Palm Beach. “She will set her own schedule, make her own rules, and use her own taste.”
Another acquaintance predicted that she might have more time and energy to focus on the decorations this time around.
“This term, without her mother, she will seek to make her own traditions, and we may all be surprised,” the source said. “She has Barron with her, and since he is closer to Washington than if she were spending all her time in Palm Beach, she may devote more honest interest to decorating for Christmas in the White House.”
The source added, “This doesn’t mean she is gung-ho—it just means she will do what she has to do. And that is nothing new.”
