Massachusetts will once again host the commander-in-chief for Thanksgiving, as President Joe Biden plans to arrive on Nantucket on Tuesday for his family’s traditional holiday stay on the island.
The president and First Lady Jill Biden are scheduled to be on Nantucket from Tuesday, November 21 through Sunday, November 26, the White House said. Biden has been spending Thanksgiving on Nantucket for decades.
The only other event on the president’s public schedule is a series of telephone calls Thursday to thank members of the military for their service.
The Nantucket Current reported last week that the Bidens are expected to spend time downtown Friday, November 24 before attending the annual tree-lighting ceremony on Main Street at 4 p.m. that day. The media outlet reported that the Bidens plan to stay at the compound of private equity billionaire David Rubenstein and that government airplanes had been dropping off supplies for the Bidens and their Secret Service protection team at Nantucket Memorial Airport.
Biden first began spending Thanksgiving on Nantucket in 1975, The New York Times reported in 2021, citing the president’s memoir. Instead of picking between the two sides of their family and inevitably disappointing one, Biden and his wife-to-be chose to spend the holiday alone with their sons at the recommendation of Biden’s chief of staff at the time, A. Wesley Barthelmes Jr. (1922-1976), who was originally from Winchester.
The National Weather Service has Nantucket under a gale watch from late Tuesday night through Wednesday evening, and the Steamship Authority on Monday served notice that wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour on Wednesday could cause trip cancellations on its Nantucket route.
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