White House Easter Egg Roll Hosted by Joe, Jill and Somebunny Else in 2022

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The White House is hoping to stir up some “egg-citement” when the Easter Egg Roll returns on Monday

 

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden expect to welcome some 30,000 kids and their adult chaperones for the egg roll, an egg hunt and other activities. The first lady is calling it the “Egg-ucation Roll," and is turning the South Lawn into a school community with a variety of educational stations, which includes an egg hunt, obstacle course and other exercise stations as well as a “cafetorium” where children and their families will learn to make, and eat treats.

 

It's the first Easter Egg Roll to be hosted by the Bidens, who are expected to address the crowd and join in some of the activities, although rain is in the weather forecast. The COVID-19 pandemic led the White House to cancel the event in 2020 and 2021.

 

The “egg-stravaganza” will get a celebrity splash through the participation of “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, singer Ciara and star of stage and screen, Kristin Chenoweth. More than two dozen costumed characters will roam the grounds, including Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, the Racing Presidents mascots for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball, Rosita and Cookie Monster from “Sesame Street” and Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others.

Military families will be among the 30,000 participants, including crew members of the U.S.S. Delaware and their families. The first lady serves as sponsor of the nuclear attack submarine, which the president re-commissioned during a ceremony this month in Wilmington, Delaware.

Members of the general public received their tickets through an online lottery.

The egg roll will be the largest event to date at the Biden White House and will unfold in five waves beginning at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 6:30 p.m.

Resumption of this Easter tradition is a sign that the White House is opening up again, despite a recent spurt of COVID-19 cases among members of the Cabinet, the White House staff, Vice President Kamala Harris' husband and members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Some of those cases stemmed from the return this month of the Gridiron Club's spring dinner.

Self-guided, public tours of the executive mansion are set to resume on Friday in a limited fashion, after they also were halted in 2020 because of the pandemic.

The White House Easter Egg Roll dates to 1878.