Clintons Go to Church, Have White House Family Gathering

President Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, celebrated Christmas on Sunday by singing “Joy to the World” at Foundry United Methodist Church. The service also included a baptism and the lighting of a Christmas candle.

Christine Marie Zgorski, daughter of Gary and Suzy Zgorski of Glassboro, N.J., will be able to boast that the President of the United States was at her baptism.

After church, the Clintons found their cat, Socks, sitting on a metal reindeer outside the White House, where the family was spending the rest of the holiday.

They were joined for the holiday by the First Lady’s mother, Dorothy Rodham; Clinton’s stepfather, Richard Kelley, and Clinton’s brother, Roger, his wife and their infant son.

By family tradition, Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea baked chocolate chip cookies on Christmas Eve, White House spokeswoman Dawn Alexander said, and they decorated the tree in the mansion’s Yellow Room.

Clinton completed his Christmas shopping Saturday during an outing that included a stop at a bookstore specializing in mysteries, and he telephoned 10 members of the military on duty overseas.

The Clintons also taped a Christmas message to the nation, saluting servicemen and women for their work “to a make the world a safer place for all of us.”