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The surrounding walls of the Red Room are all covered in red satin. During James Madison's presidency, his wife, Dolley Madison, held annual musical gatherings in this particular room on Sunday evenings

President Bush is not accustomed to doing things by half-measures and if his Christmas card list is anything to go by he is not about to start.

During the past two weeks envelopes bearing a Crawford, Texas, postmark and a return address of the White House have been landing in mail boxes and on doormats at two million addresses.

Two million is some address book.

This year the President's parents staged an 80th birthday party for Mr Bush Sr billed as including "more than 5,000 of their closest friends".

Just how many of the two million are among the closest friends of the current First Couple is unclear. The White House said simply that the cards were going out to "friends, family and foreign dignitaries".

There are many trends and legacies for which future presidents may come to curse Mr Bush - the ballooning budget deficit, skyrocketing medical costs and costly and unwinnable wars. But one of the most overlooked is Christmas card inflation.

In 2001, his first Christmas in office Mr Bush sent 875,000 cards. That was more than double the 400,000 mailed by the Clintons, who themselves presided over a White House that was not exactly ascetic.

A year later the Bushes broke the million mark. Why stop there? In 2003 they kept up the pace, sending 1.3 million. But they were just warming up.

By any measure, two million is a lot of cards. It is an increase of more than 50 per cent in a year and of 400 per cent in four years.

If Mr Bush had signed all of them personally, which he did not, he would have needed to start in late summer. This year, no doubt because of the numbers involved, not all of the cards carry a print of the presidential signature.

The card depicts a Matisse-like rendering of the White House Red Room by the Texas artist Cindi Holt, and inside bears the second verse of Psalm xcv: "Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song."

This year's presidential election is responsible for the latest increase.

The 1.4 million Republican volunteers who spent much of the year canvassing for support and turning out Mr Bush's record vote on election day, even those in the most remote campaign offices in the most longshot states, have all received a card by way of a thank-you.

The cards, which are being paid for by the Republican National Committee and which are expected to cost towards $1 million (￡520,000), are only one part of the extraordinary extravaganza that the White House puts on for Christmas.

(Agencies)