During the Obama Administration, tickets to the National Christmas Tree Lighting were nearly impossible to come by. You had to enter a lottery (and best to do so in the first hour it was open) and hope. I entered every year and never got one.

But my niece, Kate — who was here in Washington, D.C. in college for four of those years — had some sort of magic horseshoe in such things and got standing room tickets the first three years and, when she was a senior, eight seats.
During the Obama Administration, seats were as scarce as hens’ teeth, because so many people wanted to attend that most of the tickets were for standing room.
The year Kate scored those seats, she invited me to have one (and I was so excited) — but I broke a tooth the afternoon of the Lighting and it was freezing cold and I had to give it up. She and her friends enjoyed every minute. As did thousands of others.

This year?
On the left: @BarackObamaâÂÂs National Tree Lighting
On the right: @realDonaldTrumpâÂÂs National Tree Lighting #Christmas pic.twitter.com/wYoLJRO2r6â Jeremy Dickey (@JeremyDDickey) November 30, 2017
I have a friend who works for a federal agency and she had 8 tickets she was trying to give away.
â Evan Robertson (@evanrobertsonDC) December 1, 2017
Last Christmas, I didn’t even enter the lottery. I couldn’t bear the thought that this would be the last Christmas with our joyful, hopeful, kind, smart, stalwart President — and his beautiful family — lighting the tree. I did watch a rebroadcast that evening, though.
Let’s give America a Christmas present by lighting up the phones tonight and tomorrow morning to defeat the #TaxScam. (202) 224-3121
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