Lawmakers share holiday memories

The Hill talked with several members of the House of Representatives about their favorite holiday memories and traditions.

Taking a trip down memory lane, lawmakers shared their favorite presents from childhood.

One year, Rep. G.K. Butterfield’s (D-N.C.) childhood Christmas wish came true.

{mosads}“They had these airplanes that you could buy and the propeller would actually turn and you put this long string on it and it actually flies around. I remember that,” Butterfield recalled. “That was so exciting. I had wanted it for months, and my parents got it. I don’t even know what you call it, but it’s a real airplane where you put the little gasoline in there. They wouldn’t even sell them today I would guess.”

Rep. Bill Keating’s (D-Mass.) parents opted for a more practical gift when the representative was a teenager.
“I’m well known for being able to get lost in a closet. I have the worst sense of direction,” Keating told The Hill. “So my parents had this great gift. They said, ‘This was an important one; this is the biggest gift ever.’ I unraveled the whole thing, and it was a compass.”

For Reps. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the secret to the holidays lies in the family dinner.

Fudge’s favorite memories come from her family Christmas dinner.

“We have everything. We have turkey. We have roast beef. We have yams, greens, cornbread, sweet potato pie. You name it, we have it,” Fudge told The Hill. “Just the kids running around opening Christmas gifts, it’s a wonderful time.”

But Peters prefers the Thanksgiving meal to Christmas, including one dessert in particular.

“My mother’s apple pie is the highlight of the entire year, which my sister has learned how to make,” Peters said. “So there will be one apple, one pumpkin, and one chocolate something that will also be irresistible. Thanksgiving is my favorite family get together.”

Lucas believes the meal is all about the dressing or stuffing.

“I know people get fired up about the turkey and they get fired up about the ham and mashed potatoes and all that, but the dressing, using the broth off the turkey and the sage and all the various spices, that is the meal,” Lucas said. “The rest of it just kind of accompanies it.”

Despite congressional gridlock, members of the House agreed on at least one thing: Above all the presents and food, family is the most important aspect of any holiday celebration.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) loves decorating the Christmas tree with his family. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) is always on the hunt for the annual family Christmas card picture. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) enjoys tossing the pigskin around with his brothers and the children on Christmas Day on their farm in Wisconsin. And new additions have brightened the season for the families of Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.).

Huelskamp told The Hill about the year one of his adopted daughters was brought home for the first time.

“My best holiday memory would be Christmas 1999, when I brought my second youngest daughter home on Christmas Eve,” Huelskamp recalled. “She was 3 years old. We just had picked [Rebecca] up and made it back home to my hometown for a midnight Mass.”

A month before Christmas and his army deployment, the Roe family welcomed their first son.

“That was a very special Christmas with my son, who was born a month before Christmas, knowing a week after Christmas, I was going overseas,” Roe told The Hill.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) doesn’t have a favorite holiday memory or tradition. Every holiday is good if he is with his family.

“I have so many memories. … I can’t say there’s one that is good but the one constant in all of them is that it’s wrapped around family,” Hastings told The Hill. “We’ve had other [traditions] that have been broken over time, but they’re not serious. The one constant is that it’s all revolved around family.”

More holiday memories from lawmakers

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)
“I don’t know if it’s a favorite holiday memory because it was scary, but when I was, like, 6, my grandpa thought it would be really cool to go outside my window and shine a light on a little elf and ring some bells. Scared the crap out of me. I started screaming and crying because I thought somebody was outside my window and was going to kidnap me. So that’s probably my favorite holiday memory even though it still scares me to think about it.”

Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.)
“My favorite holiday had to be like 5 or 6 years ago when both of my kids were young, watching them just enjoy Christmas. Taking in the whole aspect of opening gifts, being around a Christmas tree, doing dinner at home with my children and wife.”

Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas)
“I grew up in the Texas panhandle, so the towns are small, and they’re few and far between, so my favorite memory was driving in the snow from one town to the other to look at Christmas decorations. Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it seemed like some towns did the holiday decorations better than my own, and it really probably wasn’t true.”

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)
“We have always gotten the family together on holidays, Thanksgiving for instance, to try to take this family picture, and we put it on all the holiday cards in December, and I have a complete set, and I frame them and put them on the wall, and you can just see everybody a year older. Now that everyone’s grown in sort of their own ways, it’s harder and harder to get everybody together at the same time to take a picture, so it’s really kind of funny. This year for Thanksgiving, one of my kids is not gonna be around, and shortly after we have family friends getting married, so that’s my last chance to get everybody together. When I think of the holidays, I think of getting everyone together and how much more difficult it is now than before.”

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.)
“One of my most recent [memories] was being home for Christmas. This was within probably the last 10 years. My husband and I were missionaries in the country of Romania, so we lived in Bucharest for four years, and our first Christmas home was one of the most phenomenal because it was time to spend with our family. It was the first time we’d been home in a long time. It made my mind up that home is not the structure where you live: It’s where your people are. It’s where your family is. So for us, it was huge because we’d been thousands of miles away from them.”

Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.)
“Any time you get a chance to be home rather than in Washington for the holidays is a special memory to me. Unfortunately, lately it’s been a lot of all hands on deck in D.C., so I’m hoping to be home on the family farm, spending time with my wife and kids and the rest of the family and just trying to recharge the batteries. … I’ve got some brothers; we like to play a little football outside regardless of the weather. Whether it’s sleet, whether it’s rain, whether it’s subzero weather, we try to on Christmas get out and play a little football with the kids and the nephews and nieces, too. It’s a lot of fun.”

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)
“We always get together at my mother-in-law’s home. They have a nice little farm where they used to sell Christmas trees. It’s kind of a nice place to be, and we get all the family together.”

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.)
“Every Christmas Eve for the last 20 years or so, along with a group of staffers and volunteers, we visit halfway houses, shelters for battered women and children, and one year, I went back to one of the places we had been, and one of the people who we had met the year before was running it.”

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.)
“I think in recent times, one of the things I like doing on the public side is ringing the bell at the Salvation Army out front. There’s not a lot of ways to go wrong.”