President BidenFirst lady Jill Biden and their family members spend her final Thanksgiving holiday as president on Nantucketaccording to family tradition.
Mr. Biden visited a Nantucket fire station, as he has in previous years. The family resides in the home of billionaire David Rubenstein, where they have been for three years.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden and Jill Biden called on units from each branch of the military stationed around the world, the White House announced.
This year my daughter Ashley Biden and son Hunter Biden traveled with Mr. Biden and the first lady. Hunter’s wife, Melissa, and their 4-year-old son Beau, Jr. also traveled with them.
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Biden Family Tradition Begins on Nantucket
The Biden family has celebrated Thanksgiving on Nantucket for more than 40 years. Mr. Biden wrote in his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” that “we had some good years during this period, and we had some bad years, but no matter what, no matter the bumps and the bruises we suffered, we put everything aside. and celebrated Thanksgiving on Nantucket.
Jill Biden wrote in her memoir “Where the Light Enters,” that the Bidens began traveling to Nantucket when she and the president began dating.
“When Thanksgiving came, we knew we wanted to spend it together, but we didn’t know where,” she wrote. “My parents wanted us to join them, her parents wanted us to join them, and even Neilia’s parents had extended an invitation. We were touched and grateful, but it was stressful thinking about choosing a family reunion over another one, so I said to Joe, ‘Let’s go somewhere, just the four of us.'”
Jill Biden said her husband’s then-chief of staff suggested Nantucket, which neither of them had ever been to, but she said they decided “it sounded as good as n ‘anywhere’.
Stephanie Scarbrough / AP
“I packed a cooler with sandwiches and sodas, we loaded the boys into a station wagon, and we drove six hours to Cape Town,” she writes. “On a crowded ferry to the island, we passed the beautiful Brant Point Lighthouse and walked up to the pier. Joe and I took deep breaths of salt-tinged air as we had our first view of the shingled cottages that lined the shore… That first “Every year we stayed in one of those cottages, right on the water, paying a hundred dollars for the whole week. “
Jill Biden writes that Thanksgiving on Nantucket became a family tradition for the next four decades. “With few exceptions, we have made the trip every year since, creating rituals that would become a key part of our family along the way,” she writes.
“Once in Nantucket, we spend hours browsing the stores, and on the Friday after Thanksgiving we go to lunch at the Brotherhood of Thieves restaurant. On Friday evenings we gather on cobblestone Main Street to see Santa, attend at the big Christmas tree lighting ceremony and singing Christmas carols and for many years we posed for a family photo in front of a charming seaside cottage with the sign out front that read: FOREVER WILD.
Mr. Biden’s late son, Beau, proposed to his wife Hallie during the annual Christmas tree lighting in 2001 and they were married at St. Mary’s Church in Nantucket the following year.
“Hallie always suspected that this was Beau’s way of locking them into the Biden family Thanksgivings forever,” Mr. Biden wrote. “And it worked. They were celebrating their twelfth anniversary at the end of the week, and Hallie had never missed a Thanksgiving. Even the year Beau was stationed in Iraq, she insisted we all keep the tradition and go to Nantucket.”
“Holiday travel was a constant in our grandchildren’s lives from the time they were aware of it, and they made it clear how much it meant to them,” Mr. Biden wrote.
Mr. Biden’s fateful conversation about the future with Beau and Hunter
Mr. Biden wrote in “Promise Me, Dad,” that during Thanksgiving weekend in 2014, when Beau was suffering from brain cancer, his decision regarding the 2016 presidential race weighed heavily on his spirit.
Mr. Biden wrote that in the Nantucket kitchen, Beau told him: “Dad, you’re wrong…you need to run.” I want you to run. » He said Hunter agreed. “The three of us talked for an hour,” he wrote.
Mr. Biden ultimately decided not to run this cycle, and Beau Biden died on May 30, 2015 — making this year the last year the whole family spent the holidays together on Nantucket.
“No Thanksgiving will ever be the same,” Mr. Biden wrote.
The Bidens return to Nantucket
Jill Biden wrote that in 2015, the family went to Rome instead of Nantucket. “Nantucket was just another place to remind us of everything we had lost, like a photo with Beau’s face cut out.”
But she wrote that their grandchildren asked to return in 2016. was Nantucket. They missed the little shops, the ice cream parlor that we always visited, the traditional Friday lunch. They wanted to watch the Christmas tree lighting and walk the cobblestone streets. They wanted to be together. To feel normal again. »
She wrote that they all “easily fell back into their old routines.”
Nantucket, she writes, is “the place where we learned to be family — all the complicated stories of birth and death, of marriage and divorce, of hurt and healing, of love and love and love, coming together in this little town on the edge of the world.”
Nantucket’s reaction to the Bidens
Jill Biden wrote in her memoir that when they drove down Main Street in 2016, store windows were flooded with signs saying “Welcome, Bidens!”
According to the Nantucket Current, “residents have become accustomed over the past three years of Biden’s presidency” to “downtown hotels and inns being full with Secret Service personnel, security teams and White House reporters during what is normally a quiet vacation for people.” the island.”
“Over the past three days, massive Air Force C-17s have been flying in and out of the airport, dropping off vehicles and equipment, while nearly a dozen Massachusetts State Police are arrived Monday by motorcycle aboard the Steamship Authority ferry,” the Nantucket Current reported. said. “Meanwhile, at Faregrounds Restaurant, chef Bill Puder prepares more than 200 turkey dinners for the Secret Service.”
Traffic and safety advisories have been issued for the lighting of the Christmas tree on Friday. In previous years they have also participated in the Polar Bear Plunge on Fridays.
