Celebs share stories about their holidaysCelebrity holiday anecdotes from Chris Rock, Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken and more.By DAVID MARTINDALE
What do Kelsey Grammer, Carrie Underwood and Chris Rock have in common at Christmas? Not only with each other, but also with all of us non-celebrities? When celebrating that special day, fame and wealth suddenly mean little to them; family, tradition and cherished memories mean everything. Here are some our favorite celebrity Christmas stories:
Kelsey Grammer: Every Christmas, we get the tree up usually way too early. So what happens is, instead of a Christmas tree, it’s a crispy tree. My wife and I get so enthusiastic: 'Oh, let’s put up the Christmas tree tonight.’ So we usually rush into it headlong and, by about a week before Christmas, it’s dried out. So we have to go get another one and redecorate the tree.
Carrie Underwood: When I was little, I wanted a TV so bad. There wasn’t a box underneath the tree big enough to have a TV in it. So I was getting disappointed the closer it got to Christmas, because there was never another box under there that was big enough. What my mom had done was she wrapped up the remote to my TV. I think I had that sucker until I was like, well, they might even still have it at the house. But that was really awesome to a 7-year-old girl.
Chris Rock: A couple years ago my family was in Africa on safari for Christmas. We were at a lodge, and my kids are really young and they were so scared Santa wasn’t going to show. And just the look on their faces when their toys were under a tree in Africa — kind of cool.
Matt Lauer: My dad worked as the vice president of a bicycle company. So almost every Christmas I would get a new bike. It wasn’t that I needed a new bike. It was that he could use me for market research. So he would bring me the trendiest bike and, on Christmas morning, I would ride through the neighborhood, just so my dad could see how all the other kids would react.
Kristin Chenoweth: My mom has an unfortunate ceramic Christmas tree with candles on it. It’s not very pretty, but what it lacks in aesthetics, it has a lot of meaning. Each family member lights one of the candles and talks about the past year in their life and what’s been so great about it and what they’re thankful for and also what they’ve learned during it. It’s always like, "We are not going to cry. We are NOT going to cry." But obviously all of us are bawling at the end.
Jenny McCarthy: My best Christmas gift was $20 and a box of cookies. I grew up kind of poor and I remember in college I was starving. . . . And my mom sent me $20 and a box of cookies. I was so broke and missed home and here was a little piece of my mom in a cookie. It really warmed my heart. It’s something I never forgot.
Clay Aiken: My favorite Christmas memories have always been the mishaps. I think the majority of Americans’ Christmas memories are much less It’s a Wonderful Life and much more National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I remember driving back from getting the Christmas tree and having to stick it through the back two windows of the car and driving in the freezing cold with the windows down. With our Christmases, there was always something going kind of strange like that.Al Roker: In our family, my mother makes this dish that’s a crustless sweet potato casserole-pie kind of thing. The finishing touch is marshmallows on top and you put it under the broiler to brown them. And it’s one of the Roker children’s born responsibilities to distract my mother so that they catch fire. We do that every Thanksgiving and Christmas.
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