Jill Biden’s Holiday Video Harkens Back to the LOLCat Era

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time to show off the holiday decor at the White House. Jill Biden is spreading the good word about the decor in a video collaboration with The Dodo, publisher of heartwarming pet stories. In it, she’s showing around the family kitten, Willow. “Willow can’t get enough of her first Christmas at the White House with @flotus,” The Dodo and Dr. Biden wrote in the video’s Instagram caption. 

The White House holiday theme this year is “We the People,” per the office of the first lady, and it included lots of cats and dogs incorporated throughout (the Bidens also have Commander, a German shepherd. They once had two others named Champ and Major, but Champ has passed and, after some biting and potentially scatalogical issues, Major was re-homed.) 

In this cinema-verité film, it’s as if Willow is the audience surrogate here, and we’re invited to experience these holiday decorations as the cat does. We’re bemused by the ornaments, befuddled by the artificial snow. We are feeling the holiday spirit just like this cat seems to be feeling it. 

Make the internet cats again, the video short seems to say. Make it cats! The last time the internet was cats was during the span of Dr. Biden’s husband’s vice presidency—circa 2009 to 2017—so this would make sense. It was the era of LOLCats, Lil Bub, Grumpy Cat.

The internet was made of cats, and now, the East Wing is trying to bring it back, maybe. If we could just get back to cat supremacy in this place, we could forget about Elon Musk. We could get back to the time when we took out the student loans in the first place, and stop it. We could simply lol at the cats, cats like Willow. And that would truly be a Christmas miracle.