Dolly Parton is opening up about spending time with her loved ones during the holiday season.
The country music legend has long been a lover of all things Christmas, so it's no surprise that she has a few special family holiday traditions. As for how Dolly loves to celebrate, she spoke to E! News about her outlook on exchanging gifts with her husband of 58 years, Carl Dean.
"Carl and I have never bought big fancy presents for each other," she explained to the outlet. "When I see things through the years that I think he would like when I'm out, I'll just kind of collect stuff and give them to him ... We just buy practical things. We don't worry about it, either."
What's more, don't expect Dolly to do anything the week of Christmas — she'll be spending that time with Carl and other beloved family members.
"I've never missed Christmas," she added. "I try to book all my things beforehand [and] say, 'Do not book me, certainly for the week of Christmas, 'cause I need to be home with my family.'"
While the two love to exchange things they could use in the future (like tools for Carl and cooking equipment for Dolly), that's not the only unique tradition they have for the holidays. Dolly later shared with Jessie James Decker in a December 11 interview with TalkShopLive how she loves to get all the family together for some fun festivities ahead of Christmas.
"When I have a lot of my nieces and nephews over for what we call 'cookie night,' I keep them for a day and a half — from one afternoon all night until like the next day," she noted. "They drive around the farm on the golf carts and all that. But, the whole time if I dress like Santa Claus, I've got to have all my Santa stuff on. Then when we're gonna do cookies, I gotta have my earrings that light up, I've gotta have lights in my hair, festive, sweaters that light up. So, yeah, I'm all about it."
Gotta love Dolly! Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to go bake up our own Christmas cookies and watch Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square Netflix special.
As the entertainment and news associate editor for Good Housekeeping, Adrianna (she/her) writes about everything TV, movies, music and pop culture. She graduated from Yeshiva University with a B.A. in journalism and a minor in business management. She covers shows like The Rookie, 9-1-1 and Grey's Anatomy, though when she’s not watching the latest show on Netflix, she’s taking martial arts or drinking way too much coffee.
