United States
In the United States, the Easter Egg Roll is an annual event, and is held on the White House lawn each Easter Monday for children and their parents.
The Egg Roll itself is a race, where children push an egg through the grass with a long-handled spoon. Surrounding events include appearances by White House personalities in Easter Bunny costumes, speeches and book-reading by Cabinet secretaries, and exhibits of artistically-decorated eggs.
According to an undocumented tradition, Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, began the event in 1814 and hundreds of children brought their decorated eggs to join in games. The original site was on the grounds of the United States Capitol, but in 1877 a new lawn was planted and the gardeners cancelled the event. Congress then passed a law making it illegal to use the grounds as a children's playground. At the request of a number of children, including his own, the then President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy Hayes brought the event to the White House lawns. The practice was abandoned during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, and revived by Mamie Eisenhower during her husband's term in office. Mrs. Eisenhower opened the event to black children for the first time. In 2009, President Barack Obama formally invited same-sex couples and their children to attend the Easter Egg Roll. Gay and lesbian-led families had attended the Egg Roll in previous years.
On April 13, 2009, the Obamas hosted their first White House Easter egg roll. The theme “Let’s go play” was meant to encourage young people to lead healthy, active lives. Celebrities such as J.K. Rowling, Glee Cast and Justin Bieber attended the egg roll in 2010. It was featured in the 2007 film National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Read more about this topic: Egg Rolling
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“United States! the ages plead,—
Present and Past in under-song,—
Go put your creed into your deed,—
Nor speak with double tongue.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)