Home Town stars Ben and Erin Napier love the holidays — and their favorite traditions may give you an idea for your family.
After musing about what their daughters, Helen, 7, and Mae, 4, will remember about the holidays, Ben shared his current favorite family holiday activity: riding around in a car looking at Christmas lights. But the car “must be a vintage car,” he noted with a laugh.
“Cars [must] predate 1990!” Erin joked.
Indoors, it’s all about cooking.
“My mom and I made pomanders together,” Erin said. “We would stick cloves and oranges and make them decorative. And she had this tower we would stack them up on. Now my girls love it. We do that together every year. The smell is just the smell of Christmas. It’s really specific. You only smell it this time of year.”
Another family memory involves their special church service.
“This is our girls’ favorite thing — which I feel like a win as a family,” Ben explained. “They both talk about on Christmas Eve, we go to our church, we have a candlelight service and it’s very simple, it’s very short. Then they [get to hold candles in the dark].”
“They get to hold fire but it’s beautiful,” he continued. “It’s a really beautiful service. They never forget it. They talk about it. And then we go home and we have fettuccine alfredo and it’s a very simple night that transcends and means more to them than anything else.”
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It’s no surprise Christmas morning comes with more family time for the HGTV stars.
“My best friend, Mallory, married my first cousin, Jim, and we’ve always lived right by each other. Our girls have grown up this way,” Erin said. “Every Christmas morning, we get up and [get together].”
“Mallory makes homemade donuts,” she continued. “I bring the breakfast casserole and whoever hosts has to have the fruit tray, too. And we do a big breakfast and the kids bring their toys and show them off and play with them together and we have a really big, fun brunch. We invite the grandparents too.”
Through all of their family’s holiday traditions the HGTV stars like to celebrate community – and their new partnership with Bob’s Red Mill, which highlights the importance of being good neighbors, allows them to do that.
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“We teach our daughters that not everyone is going to have a happy holiday,” Ben said. “There are less fortunate people out there who, you know, a pan of biscuits will go a long way towards being a salve for their souls.”
“Anytime we bake I’m trying to double the recipe,” Erin continued. “That way we have something we can always take to someone. And I leave it up to the girls: Who is going through something tough right now? Who have we not seen in a while that we need to check in with? And we let them kind of guide thinking about how [it’s important to] think about other people instead of ourselves at the holidays especially.”
