While July isn’t usually a month where we think about giving gifts, let’s take a moment and put ourselves in gift-giving mode. Afterall, we are only 147 days or 4 months and 25 days till Christmas. And there are some of you who have been preparing for Christmas 2025 ever since Christmas 2024 had ended. You put lots of time and thought into the gifts you give, wanting to give the perfect gift.
I bet some of our presidents wish others had put a bit more thought into the gifts they’ve been given!
Thankfully, all the president has to do is smile for the photo op, shake some hands, and say thank you, making a diplomatic fuss so that the giver feels like they really nailed it. Thanks to the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966, most of these gifts cannot be kept by the president and are instead transferred to the National Archives by the Gift Unit or regifted to other organizations or agencies.
Consider some of the most unusual gifts given to our presidents.1
The first unusual gift that makes the list was given to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802. It was a 1,235 pound wheel of cheese, gifted by the citizens of Cheshire, Massachusetts. I love cheese but this is a bit much. It was put on display in the East Room for at least a year while it was slowly whittled down for presidential functions. Rumor has it that it was eventually tossed into the Potomac.
Not to be outdone, in 1835, President Andrew Jackson received a 1,400 pound wheel of cheese from Col. Thomas Meacham of Oswego County, New York. The cheese received a parade, was displayed in the East Room, and eventually consumed at a party with over 10,000 guests. If each person ate 2.24 ounces of cheese, it would have been gone in no time!2
“In 1943, after attending a conference of world leaders in Marrakech, Morocco, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created an oil-on-canvas painting of the Kutubiyya Mosque. He then gifted the painting to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was also attending the conference, as a symbol of the special relationship between the two allied nations.”3
Imagine opening a gift, only to find two grains of rice and a magnifying glass. That’s what
President Nixon received from Pakistani artist S. Nabi Ahmed Rizvi. This was not a gag gift or white elephant gift. On each grain of rice, Rizvi had painted a portrait of Nixon, one of Nixon as a young commander in the U.S. Navy and one as president.
The Bush’s received some strange gifts. President H.W. Bush received a Komodo dragon – yes, a very real, reptilian lizard. The creature was regifted to the Cincinnati Zoo. And President George W. Bush received 300 pounds of raw lamb meat. It was regifted but what was done with it seems to be a mystery. It’s most likely that the gift “was likely destroyed by the secret service due to official White House rules on food and drink gifts.”4
“Now that President Trump has been gifted a $400 million luxury jet by Qatar, it has triggered criticism as a lot of media analysts have viewed that such a gift would violate rules within the constitution that seek to guard against bribery and corruption. This is undoubtedly the most expensive gift ever received by a US President in history.
“The “Telegraph” states: “Trump officials reportedly believe the president might be able to keep the luxury plane because it will be transferred to his presidential library at the end of his term. Sources say they arrived at that conclusion after determining that the gift was not conditioned on any official act and, therefore, was not bribery.”5
Through the years, I’ve been blessed with many gifts. 99.9% have been wonderful and normal with maybe .1% being – shall we say, interesting. I would have to put my Michigan tie and an adult onesie in that .1% category. Those were all given, though, out of love and fun. I still have them to this day!
The gift I’ve been given, though, that I value the most is the gift of salvation. Romans 5:15-18 says, “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of 
one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. (16) And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. (17) For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) (18) Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.” Romans 6:23 puts it simply, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Hopefully, you can rejoice today because you have received the same gift. All I can say is, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” (2 Corinthians 9:15)
1https://historyfacts.com/us-history/article/gifts-given-to-u-s-presidents/?lctg=1faede22-f93a-468d-8d24-3d95c829d9b6
2https://wiltonhistorical.org/2017/09/thomas-jefferson-mammoth-cheese/
3https://historyfacts.com/us-history/article/gifts-given-to-u-s-presidents/?lctg=1faede22-f93a-468d-8d24-3d95c829d9b6
4https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1311726-gifts-received-by-us-presidents-from-foreign-rulers-govts
5Ibid.
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