President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and members of their family are spending his final Thanksgiving holiday as president on Nantucket, per family tradition.
Mr. Biden headed to a fire station on Nantucket, as he has in previous years. The family is staying at the house of billionaire David Rubenstein, where they have stayed for the past three years.
This year, 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 and there may be other family members staying with the Bidens.
Start of Biden family Nantucket tradition
The Biden family has been celebrating Thanksgiving in Nantucket for over 40 years. Mr. Biden wrote in his memoir “Promise Me, Dad,” that “we had some great years in that span, and we had some lousy years, but whatever was happening, whatever bumps and bruises we were suffering, we put it all aside and celebrated Thanksgiving in Nantucket.”
Jill Biden wrote in her memoir “Where the Light Enters,” that the Bidens started going to Nantucket when she and the president started dating.
“When Thanksgiving rolled around, we knew we wanted to spend it together, but we didn’t know where,” she writes. “My parents wanted us to join them, his parents wanted us to join them, and even Neilia’s parents had extended an invitation. We were touched and grateful, but it was stressful to think about choosing one family gathering over another, so I said to Joe, ‘Let’s go somewhere, just the four of us.'”
Jill Biden said that her husband’s then-chief of staff suggested Nantucket, which neither of them had ever been, but she said they decided “it sounded as good as 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 the Cape,” she writes. “On a packed ferryboat to the island, we chugged past beautiful Brant Point Lighthouse and up to the pier. Joe and I took deep breaths of salt-tinged air as we got our first view of the shingled cottages that lined the coast … That first year, we stayed in one of those cottages, right on the water, paying one hundred dollars for the whole week.”
Jill Biden writes that Nantucket Thanksgiving became the family tradition for the next four decades. “With a few exceptions, we’ve made the trek 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 poking around in the shops, and on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we go to the Brotherhood of Thieves restaurant for lunch. We gather on cobblestoned Main Street on Friday evenings to see Santa Claus, watch the big Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, and sing carols. And for many years, we posed for a family photo in front of a charming seaside cottage with the sign in front that read: FOREVER WILD.”
Mr. Biden’s late son Beau proposed to his wife Hallie at the annual Christmas tree lighting in 2001 and they were married at Nantucket’s St. Mary’s church the following year.
“Hallie always suspected it was Beau’s way of locking them into Biden Family Thanksgivings for all time,” 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.”
“The holiday trip was a constant in our grandchildren’s lives from the time they were aware, 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, with Beau suffering from brain cancer, his decision about the 2016 presidential race weighed heavily on his mind.
Mr. Biden wrote that in the kitchen in Nantucket, Beau told him “Dad, you’ve got it wrong … you’ve got 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 that cycle, and Beau Biden died on May 30, 2015 — making that year the last year the whole family spent the holiday together on Nantucket.
“No Thanksgiving would ever be the same,” Mr. Biden wrote.
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 all that we had lost, like a photograph with Beau’s face cut out.”
But she wrote that their grandkids asked to return in 2016. “Thanksgiving was Nantucket. They missed the little shops, the ice cream parlor we always visited, the traditional Friday lunch. They wanted to watch the Christmas tree lighting and wander 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 wrote, was “where we learned how to be a family — all the complicated story lines of birth and death, marriage and divorce, hurt and healing, love and love and love, coming together in this little town at 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 back, Bidens!”
According to the Nantucket Current, “residents have grown accustomed to over the past three years during Biden’s presidency” that “downtown hotels and inns are fully booked with Secret Service personnel, security teams, and White House reporters during what is normally a quiet holiday for the island.”
“Over the past three days, massive Air Force C-17s were flying in and out of the airport dropping off vehicles and equipment, while nearly a dozen Massachusetts State Police Troopers arrived on motorcycles aboard the Steamship Authority ferry on Monday,” the Nantucket Current said. “Meanwhile at Faregrounds Restaurant, chef Bill Puder is cooking up more than 200 turkey dinners for the Secret Service.”
Traffic and security advisories have been listed for the Christmas tree lighting on Friday. In previous years, they have participated in the Polar Bear Plunge on Friday as well.
