Few people have bragging rights to the year 2024 like Julia Reynolds.
For the most part, life just followed its normal ebb and flow. She closed out her third year at Greenwood Public Library, where she serves as community relations specialist, saw her two sons, aged 11 and 13, through their respective school years, and then she was offered an opportunity she had only dreamed about – decorate the White House for the holidays.
So how does a librarian from the Midwest end up living out her wildest Martha Stewart-esque fantasy, wielding tulle and trimmings at our nation’s capital?
“I put my name in a lottery online to be chosen,” Reynolds says. “I entered that lottery for six straight years. Every year when my name wasn’t pulled, I really wasn’t disappointed. I just figured I would throw my name back in the hat the next round. So I think when my name was pulled, it was almost hard to believe it was really finally happening. I mean, I’m sure there are people who enter their name for years and years before being chosen, if chosen at all.”
Reynolds says she originally stumbled across the opportunity online six years ago while reading the blog of a florist who had accepted an invitation to the White House to serve as a member of the Christmas decorating committee.
“It was just so interesting to read his account of the experience,” Reynolds says. “To think that you just hop on this website and enter basic information about yourself. It is all just for fun, but a few months later you very well could be stringing lights on the Christmas tree that the president of the United States is going to look at this holiday season. It’s such a neat opportunity.”
Admittedly, being called up to the duty of decorating may not be every American’s dream. But Reynolds grew up loving crafts. By the time she was a young adult, the DIY craze was just catching on. It was a social trend she could get behind.
“I just really enjoy all the things that one would associate with, let’s say, being a day-to-day homemaker, or even just as an adult, building a comfortable home to live in,” she says. “I love decorating, fashion and interior design. It all makes me happy, I just enjoy it so much.”
Reynolds was chosen to be part of the group that served on the premises but also was privy to a White House storage warehouse facility – a place, she says, that was a gold mine of “any and everything you could need to decorate for the holiday.”
There, she and her team packed and organized the items they wanted to decorate with. The secret service screened everything before being moved to the White House.
“We did some crafting at the warehouse, then had it shipped over,” she says. “But for the most part, we would get back to our respectful areas of assignment and get our projects busted out. This was a 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day there type of experience. And you were doing physical labor. But you’d be moving right along on your project and then just kind of stop and remind yourself, ‘I’m looking at George Washington’s dishes,’ or, ‘I’m standing in the same room as the painting that Dolley Madison saved when the White House was burning at the hands of the British.’”
And to witness such things in a year that saw political divide in preparation for an election? “Political preference played no role,” she says. “It was an incredible experience. And how cool to be someone with an opinion on politics, in a room with many people who also have their own personal opinions on politics, literally standing in our nation’s capital, all together, getting along, discussing Christmas decorations of all things? Being chosen and then being able to participate will forever be a core memory for me. Doing it during an election year, this election year of all years, and it being a peaceful, fun experience – that part I never want to forget. That is a really cool thing.”
