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The White House Easter egg roll sounds fun and glamorous. It’s neither. -
The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/28/the-white-house-easter-egg-roll-sounds-fun-and-glamorous-its-neither/

The White House Easter egg roll sounds fun and glamorous. It’s neither.

President Obama and the Easter Bunny preside over the 2015 White House
Easter egg roll. (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

The White House says about 300,000 people enter the drawing to attend its
annual Easter egg roll, and only about 35,000 receive tickets, so when you
do — as my toddler, mother-in-law and I did last year — you feel as though
you’ve won the lottery. And you have. Only it’s less like the Powerball and
more like the Shirley Jackson short story, in which a small town randomly
selects one resident every year and stones that person to death.

The White House Easter egg roll, this year’s installment of which is
happening Monday, *sounds* so good. The “egg roll” part sounds charming and
old-timey; the “White House” part sounds glamorous yet intimate, as though
the president has personally invited a few guests to come over for a
lemonade and a romp on the lawn. Plus it’s wonderfully historic: It has
been going on since 1878, according to the National Park Service
<http://www.nps.gov/whho/planyourvisit/easter-egg-roll.htm>, when
Rutherford B. Hayes invited children to roll eggs on his lawn after
Congress banned them from playing on the Capitol grounds.

That “35,000 receive tickets” part makes it easy to understand what
Congress was thinking. Thirty-five thousand people in your yard is a lot of
people. It’s Virginia Tech. Fenway Park. Annapolis, Md. — all in the same
place, and all trying to do exactly the same thing as you, your squirmy kid
and your 77-year-old mother-in-law.

Mercifully, the White House divides ticket holders into groups. From about
7 a.m. to 7 p.m., approximately 5,000 people every two hours funnel through
the Ellipse and on to the South Lawn of the White House.

By the time we arrived for the 2015 event, 45 minutes before our appointed
time, the front of the line was invisible. The back was somewhere around
the Old Executive Office Building, where a volunteer waved a Trader
Joe’s-esque sign announcing that this was, in fact, the end.

People swarmed around her: a grandmother in a West African buu-buu; twin
girls in floor-length gowns; a mother-daughter pair in coordinating suit
jackets, the elder wearing a West Point lapel pin; infinite boys in
seersucker shorts.

When James Madison wrote Federalist 10
<http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm>, extolling the breadth and
diversity of the nation, even he could not have imagined the line at the
White House Easter egg roll. Indeed, the only common theme I could detect
was a kind of civic pride. The tickets specified that people should dress
comfortably, but most guests had made some effort in their appearance — to
show respect, I assumed, for their proximity to the White House.

If they could ever get there. After the first hour in line, we’d reached
the Ellipse. After the second, we could see the South Lawn gates.

To be fair, the event coordinators were doing their best. Volunteers
offered free water, goodie bags, temporary tattoos. Peppy music played from
loudspeakers. Yet very little can significantly improve the experience of
standing in line. Especially with children.

On the first hot day of the year.

* [Four other sweet egg hunts in Washington
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2016/03/24/4-sweet-easter-egg-hunts-in-d-c/>]
*

To stay positive, I trained my eyes on the welcome signs or arches that
popped up every 200 yards or so. The markers were helpful goal posts from a
distance, but once we had passed them, they were psychologically crushing.
Beyond every seeming entrance was another line.

Finally, our trio reached the lawn. It’s not very big once the fountain and
a few other things are blocked off, but it’s very nice: green grass, a
gentle hill, a handful of trees. The White House loomed iconically in the
background.

The president was nowhere to be seen, but my mother-in-law spotted a patch
of shade and immediately sank to her knees. My daughter, meanwhile, took
off for a giant duck standing on the hillside.

“Duck! Duck! Duck!” she announced and held out her arms to be picked up.

“The line’s back there,” a volunteer said. I glanced over my shoulder — a
dozen people were already waiting to have their pictures taken with the
duck.

Indeed, lines stretched behind the arts and crafts table, the hoop shoot
and — of course — the egg roll. I pried my daughter away and carried her,
flailing and back arched, to the top of the hill to see what all the egg
roll fuss was about. It looked really cute, like croquet with, presumably,
eggs. But the line to play stretched so far my eyes became tired searching
for the end.

Instead, I let my daughter wander up and down the hill. She investigated a
manhole cover and tried to eat the Cheerios off another child’s stroller
tray.

Then the peppy music abruptly stopped. Our shift was over. I snatched my
mother-in-law and hoisted her to her feet to take one, for-the-ages,
must-have photo on the lawn. As the shutter closed, so did my daughter’s
eyes.

Then we joined the throng on the hour-long march back out. A silence
settled over us. Most children weighing less than 50 pounds appeared to
have been picked up and fallen asleep. I could see the slash of sunburn on
their cheeks, and the ribbons sliding out of the girls’ hair. Mothers
pushed empty strollers and stared vacantly ahead. Fathers mopped their
brows. A young girl toward the front startled awake and briefly screamed,
then fell back against her dad’s shoulder.

Some Medusa-like experience seemed to be happening to us. I could feel my
once-bubbly enthusiasm turn to cold, cynical stone. The Easter egg roll
might better be called the Easter egg queue, I thought, or, to keep it a
little more upbeat, the really, really slow Easter egg parade.

But what is the White House to do? Give fewer tickets? Certainly the event
would be more fun — but less democratic. Plus, it would be churlish to deny
other people the opportunity to attend now that I’ve had my turn. (If you
still want to, that is,)

So I will offer to my fellow Americans only this: I vow never to go again.
Without my entry in the lottery — and quite likely, without the entries of
almost everyone else who has ever attended — the chances of other
applicants improve.

Eventually, I imagine, everyone in the country will be accommodated. In
future years, the White House Easter egg roll will be a rite of passage
only for first-time parents and new immigrants, binding us as a nation and
bonding our children in their memories of standing wearily for hours on the
president’s grass.
Idina Menzel sings the national anthem at the White House

Play Video2:01

Frozen star Idina Menzel sang the national anthem at the annual White House
Easter egg roll March 28. (Reuters)

*More from PostEverything:*

No, your kid may not have a snack
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/28/no-you-cant-have-a-snack/>

Target will stop labeling toys for boys or for girls. Good.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/13/target-will-stop-selling-toys-for-boys-or-for-girls-good/>

Today’s parents are much too hard on themselves
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/13/todays-parents-are-much-too-hard-on-themselves/>


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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