Jill Biden decorates White House with Valentine’s Day hearts for second year in a row

Now, Biden is repeating the gesture, with the display of a giant White House-created heart on the North Lawn, as well as decorations inside the White House’s East Wing from the second-grade classes of the District of Columbia’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, Alejandro Diasgranados, of Aiton Elementary School. As with last year, the lawn decorations were erected in an area in front of the row of cameras that TV reporters use for their live shots of the White House — which means they were broadcast across the country all day.

“I just wanted some joy and I think just, with the pandemic, everybody’s feeling a little down, so it’s just a little joy, a little hope,” Biden said last year. “That’s all.”

She had put up the hearts during the end of former president Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and as New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) was being accused of covering up a staggering number of coronavirus deaths in his state’s nursing homes and revelations were coming out about the media’s mistreatment of Britney Spears during her mental health crises and conservatorship. Even Justin Timberlake — Spears’s former boyfriend — apologized.

This time, Biden’s Valentine’s Day decorations come at a particularly fraught time for her husband’s administration. His approval ratings have fallen despite a strong national economy in a midterm election year that has Democrats worried about losing control of the House. The display is among several soft-news efforts spurred by the first lady, which include the addition of a cat, Willow, to the White House and their German shepherd puppy, Commander, appearing during a special message at the top of Puppy Bowl XVIII, an annual Super Bowl-day tradition, on Sunday.

“Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays because it’s all about love,” Jill Biden said in the video, while wearing a turtleneck sweater knitted with the word “Amour” on the front.

“What’s so wonderful about having pets is they give you unconditional love, joy and comfort every day,” she said.

Her North Lawn decorations this time include cardboard cutouts of Commander and Willow, as well as a red heart with a Bible verse from 1 Corinthians 13:13: “Three things will last forever — faith, hope and love — and the greatest of these is love.”

The 42 hearts the students created for Biden are based on templates and instructions provided by the first lady’s office, according to her spokesman Michael LaRosa. They were also asked to incorporate specific words provided by Biden, such as “compassion,” “healing,” “peace” and “family.” The students’ handwritten and hand-colored “heart-work,” as the White House calls it, hangs on strands of string in the windows of the East Landing — much like strings of blue and yellow “peace doves” hung in the windows of the East Colonnade for Biden’s Christmas decorations.

The president and first lady marked Feb. 14 by welcoming 20 of those second-graders for a tour of the White House and the Valentine’s Day installation on the North Lawn. Their teacher, Diasgranados, had visited the White House in October at a reception the first lady threw for the 2022 and 2021 state and national Teachers of the Year.

The children pulled up to the White House in a school bus midday on Feb 14. Commander hid behind a tree and barked as they went inside. “That’s the paparazzi!,” one boy shouted, pointing to the press. After their tour, the first lady, wearing a light pink mask and light pink coat, held the hands of two children and showed the second-graders the cutout paintings of her pets on the lawn.

Last year, Biden had surprised her husband with the hearts; the president learned about them for the first time as he took an unscheduled stroll outside.

The president told reporters then that Valentine’s Day is his wife’s favorite holiday. During his first year as vice president during the Obama administration, he said, he walked into his office to see that his wife had painted every one of the panes in his window with a heart that read, “Joe loves Jill.”

“None of them said ‘Jill loves Joe.’ They said ‘Joe loves Jill’ in every one,” the president said. He added that he once told a reporter who asked about his “great love affair” with his wife that “everyone knows I love her more than she loves me!”

Biden’s Christmas decorations had a similarly handmade feel to her valentine hearts. She decorated the most important trees in the White House with ornaments featuring photographs of her family, as well as those of past presidents in quiet moments at home with their wives, children and pets. The decorations throughout the White House were dedicated to pandemic first responders.

If Valentine’s Day is Jill Biden’s favorite holiday, then April Fools’ Day is a close second. A notorious prankster, she was known during the Obama administration for disguising herself with wigs at parties held in the vice president’s residence and for once stuffing herself into an overhead bin of Air Force Two, popping out to surprise Secret Service agents as they boarded. As first lady, last April 1, she fooled both reporters and members of her staff by dressing up as a flight attendant on the way back from a trip to California.

“I’ve always believed you’ve got to steal the joyful moments when you can,” Biden wrote in “Where the Light Enters,” her 2019 memoir. “Life is difficult, and if you sit around waiting for fun to show up, you’ll find yourself going without it more often than not.”

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