Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, 168 years ago today. One of the happiest White House Christmas stories we know of belongs to his family.

He was only 42 when he became president. In September 1901 an assassin shot President William McKinley in Buffalo, and McKinley died on the 14th. Roosevelt was sworn in that same day at the Ansley Wilcox House in Buffalo. Before long he had moved into the White House with his wife, Edith, and their six children: Alice, Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. Archie was 7 and Quentin was 3.

Roosevelt put that family's Christmas on paper himself. The day after Christmas in 1902, he wrote it all out in a letter to a young boy, James Garfield, whose grandfather was the late President Garfield.

By a quarter of seven that morning the children were dressed and banging on their parents' door. Six stockings hung by the fireplace in the room, "all bulging out with queer angles and rotundities." Roosevelt and Edith shut the window and got a fire going, then took the stockings down. That was when Archie showed them his secret.

"Archie had a little Christmas tree of his own which he had rigged up with the help of one of the carpenters in a big closet," Roosevelt wrote, "and we all had to look at the tree and each of us got a present off of it."

Nobody was forgotten, not even the animals. Jack the dog, Tom Quartz the kitten, and Algonquin the pony each had a present on the tree.

The children climbed into their parents' bed and opened their stockings. After breakfast the family went to the library, where a table of bigger gifts stood ready for each child. Quentin's was an electric railroad, put together for him by the White House electrician. That evening the Roosevelts had Christmas dinner with their friends the Lodges, then danced in the East Room and ended the night with the Virginia Reel.

There's a popular story that Roosevelt banned Christmas trees from the White House, but very little backs it up. Keeping a tree wasn't a Roosevelt family habit. The White House Historical Association says the president was amused by Archie's closet surprise and let the custom go on for as long as the family lived in the house.

Archie's tree appears on the reverse side of our 2011 Theodore Roosevelt ornament. The front has a 1901 cartoon of Santa carrying gifts to the White House, captioned "I hear that there are some kids in the White House this year." Come have a closer look.