It was 46 years ago, but Bob Bostock still remembers opening the envelope and being excited looking at its contents.
It was a Christmas greeting card from President Richard M. Nixon.
“It was 1973, and I got a Christmas card from President Nixon – just like 900 million other people,” said Bostock, who was then a 15-year-old high school student. He had worked on Nixon’s reelection campaign, working the telephone banks to get out the vote.
It was that Christmas greeting card from Nixon that sparked Bostock’s interest in collecting presidential Christmas cards and presidential memorabilia – albeit many years later.
Bostock is sharing some of these Christmas greeting cards in an exhibit in a curio cabinet at the Lawrence Township Municipal Building. The cabinet is located in the hallway at the north entrance to the building.
Bostock said he was invited to exhibit some of his Christmas cards by Lawrence Township Historian Brooke Hunter. The Christmas cards will be on display in the cabinet through mid-January.
“The primary pleasure of collecting is being able to share one’s collection with others. I hope visitors to town hall will enjoy seeing this selection of presidential Christmas greeting cards, representing every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to the present,” Bostock said.
“I also hope this exhibit will remind each of us that what unites us as Americans is far greater than what divides us,” said Bostock.
Bostock said he is a “big student” of the presidency and the White House, and especially Christmas greeting cards.
His collection includes at least one Christmas card, from President Eisenhower to President Trump, although only a few of those cards are on display.
Among the items on display is a Christmas greeting card from President Obama. When the card is opened, a paper model of the White House pops up. The card is signed by the Obama family.
There are invitations to the White House Christmas party from Nixon, President Ford and President Reagan also on display.
Bostock included a pair of green mittens in the cabinet. One of the mittens says “White House” and the other mitten says “Christmas.” The mittens are dated 1987.
Eisenhower was the first president to send a quantity of Christmas greeting cards, Bostock said. Each Christmas card had the presidential seal, plus the year and a greeting inside it.
Bostock, who has always been interested in history and politics, parlayed those interests into a career as a freelance author and speechwriter for politicians, including former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.
Bostock also has curated exhibits for Nixon and former First Lady Pat Nixon at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California.
Initially, Bostock collected political campaign buttons. He changed his focus after joining Ebay in 1999. His collection began to grow in earnest in the 2000’s, and has continued to expand.
One of the earliest items in Bostock’s Christmas greeting card collection is an invitation to a Christmas party at the White House in 1931 from Mrs. Hoover and her grandchildren, Peggy Ann and Peter.
Bostock said guests were asked to bring a toy to the party that would be given to needy children. “It illustrates that the country was in kind of a mess,” he said.
In his last Christmas at the White House, President George H.W. Bush mailed a special Christmas card that featured the presidential seal on the cover and a family photo inside.
That special Christmas card, which was mailed to the president’s personal friends, was prepared in addition to the hundreds of thousands of official Christmas cards that were sent to political supporters, Bostock said.
“If you send a Christmas card to the president, you get an acknowledgement – not a Christmas card [in return],” he said.
But perhaps one of the most poignant items in Bostock’s card collection is the card with an artist’s rendering of the newly redecorated green room at the White House that was to be sent by President and Mrs. Kennedy in December 1963.
The card, which was signed and ready to go, was never mailed.
Instead, Jackie Kennedy’s social secretary, Nancy Tuckerman, wrote to White House staffers on Mrs. Kennedy’s behalf to thank them for their “untiring devotion during the past two weeks and [that] your loyalty at this sad time has been a great source of comfort to her.”