WASHINGTON, D.C. — An evergreen, decorated with images of an Iowa winter, stands along a path with 55 other trees. These Fraser Firs, each about six feet tall, are dwarfed by the massive, 40-foot Colorado blue spruce growing behind them.

Behind the massive collection of evergreens is the White House.

These impressive pieces are all part of the annual Pageant of Peace celebration. President Bush presided at the tree lighting ceremony Thursday evening to begin the event, which also features choral groups, a model train and other entertainment each night through Dec. 31.

Every year, the theme is “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Everywhere.”

Each tree has its own personality, as it wears ornaments depicting the holiday season in the state or territory it represents.

The Iowa tree represents a “down-home” Iowa holiday, says Terri Johnson, director of the Manning Heritage Foundation in Manning. The foundation sponsored this year’s tree by creating the decorations.

While shopping with her daughter, Johnson, 50, came across a Christmas card she says “fit so well with winter traditions in Iowa.”

The scene displayed on the tree depicts a family taking a sleigh ride near a covered bridge.

Johnson says volunteers got together to create Iowa’s ornaments. The pageant provides each sponsoring organization with 50 clear plastic globes to protect the designs from the weather.

Each Iowa ornament shows either the covered bridge or the family in a sleigh. The women united one afternoon to put the 50 ornaments together.

“We did it like an assembly line,” says Theda Wiese, 64.

The retired Manning woman says one woman drew the circles, another cut out the pictures, others tied the pictures into the globes and the entire group tied the ribbons that now hold the ornaments on the tree.

Johnson says the bridge in the picture reminded her of the covered bridges of Madison County. Over the past two years, two of the famous bridges have been lost to arson.

“It’s sad for everybody in Iowa to have lost those bridges,” Johnson says.

Wiese says that while Iowa does not have as many horses and sleighs as it used to, the picture is still an Iowa winter.

“We had to come up with something that depicted the whole state, not just our town,” Wiese says. She says if the heritage foundation gets to decorate the ornaments in the future, she would like to depict Iowa’s agriculture and education.

Audrey Hartzell, a volunteer consultant who has worked with the Pageant of Peace for about 20 years, says decorating the trees can be difficult because ornaments have to last outside for more than three weeks.

Hartzell, 68, says last year the Danish Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn sponsored the tree and depicted another old-fashioned Christmas. The globes showed how children were not allowed to see the tree until Christmas morning.

She says that, in previous years, artists created ornaments that held small patchwork quilts, carvings, wood sculptures and other winter scenes.

“A lot of things are reminiscent of when they were young,” Hartzell says.