Easter Monday on the White House Lawn

Well, it seems the new Trump administration is involved in yet another controversy. No, it’s not about national security or immigration. Nor does it have anything to do with his fraud and waste elimination program or Elon Musk.

No, it revolves around this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, scheduled for Easter Monday, April 21. It seems the administration has put out an appeal for corporate sponsors for the event, and the mainstream media, egged on by certain politicians, sees this as a sacrilege.

Apparently, for between $75,000 and $200,000 you can secure logo and branding opportunities such as “custom branded baskets, snacks, beverages, or souvenirs,” as well as other perks. All money raised will go to the White House Historical Association.

The event itself, now it is 147th year, has always been fueled by private donations from individuals and organizations, primarily the American Egg Board, the major donor responsible for providing some 30,000 hard boiled, hand painted eggs to the event every year. Coca-Cola, Disney and others have also pitched in, but branding opportunities have always been severely restricted.

Critics fear this new solicitation will result in “Easter eggs looking like NASCAR drivers,” and others charge that the offering essentially sells the event to corporate America, even though there are all sorts of restrictions as to what can be part of the event regarding advertising.

And it is quite an event, an expensive one too. Every year it features, in addition to those 30,000 hard boiled, hand decorated eggs, an extravaganza of live entertainers and games and activities for kids of all ages. And each year it gets more expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of donated dollars to produce, hence the appeal for additional donations.

And the sponsor solicitations are not the only controversy surrounding the event. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has requested that the president swap potatoes for eggs this year and has unsuccessfully advocated that the “Tired old Easter egg roll at the White House” be replaced by a potato roll instead.

To quote Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.”

But controversies aside, the egg roll is quite an event. It apparently all started, egg rolling that is, hundreds of years ago in the United Kingdom. Kids would take hard boiled decorated eggs to the top of hillsides the day after Easter and compete to see whose would roll farther before cracking.

    Settlers, some of them anyway, brought this tradition to America, where some families had family egg rolls on Easter Mondays, and as early as 1810, First Lady Dolley Madison is said to have unsuccessfully advocated for a public egg roll at the White House. That never happened, but there were said to be private ones during the terms of both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

But in the 1870s more and more children began to show up in public places in the District of Columbia on the day after Easter to roll eggs and get into all sorts of other mischief, and the very best place in the city for egg rolling was Capitol Hill. In 1876, Congress was trying to landscape the grounds around two new wings of the Capitol Building, but on Easter Monday of that year more than 10,000 boys and girls swarmed Capitol Hill and noisily tore up the turf.

Within two weeks, a furious Congress passed The Turf Protection Act, forbidding egg rolls or other events by the public on Capitol Hill.

But would they enforce the new law? The next year, 1877, a huge rain made the question moot, but in 1878 the weather was fine, and a notice appeared in the newspaper the day before Easter that there would be no egg rolls on Capitol Hill that year.

It is not known why, but President Rutherford B. Hayes invited the children of the city to come to the White House to roll their eggs that day, and children have been doing that on Easter Mondays ever since.

The event has been canceled several times because of weather, war and food shortages, and twice because of COVID-19, but generally speaking, it gets more extravagant and expensive every year. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison invited John Philip Sousa and the Marine Band to perform for the crowd, which was such a success it turned into a tradition that has been followed in every egg roll since then.

Each year the Roll seems to get more elaborate, some would say outlandish. There have been antique car shows, talent contests, live bands, even school classes. In 1929, First Lady May Hoover added maypole and folk dancing to the agenda, and 47,000 people showed up to take part.

In 1969 Pat Nixon introduced the first costumed character to the event, The Easter Bunny, an instant hit and a repeat performer every year. The Nixons also added egg rolling races to the activities, and now these races are the most popular events of the day.

Jimmy Carter brought a three-ring circus and a petting zoo to the event in 1977, and four years later the Reagans added Broadway shows and Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloons. Who knows what this year’s Egg Roll will bring.

   But with those 30,000 hard-boiled, hand decorated eggs to clean up, I’d sure hate to be a member of the ground crew the next day.