Erin Napier’s Christmas Favorites: Christ’s Birth, a Love Story and Precious Gifts
By Movieguide® Contributor
HGTV’s Erin Napier told Guidepost how she and husband Ben share “the magic of Christmas” with daughters Helen and Mae and shared her favorite holiday memories, from celebrations of Christ’s birth to her and Ben’s love story to gifts and recipes.
“The whole month of December should feel different from the rest of the year. It’s when we remember how Christ was born,” the HOMETOWN star shared. “People think it’s crazy that Ben wears a suit, tie and cufflinks every Sunday. But it’s the same thing. He puts on a suit on Sundays because Sundays should feel different. It’s when we worship God.”
Even the couple’s young daughters, Helen and Mae, understand the story of Jesus’ birth.
“Helen loves to paint. At age two, she was painting something vigorously, swiping the brush around on the canvas. I glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t believe it,” Napier said. “Without her knowing, we could see that she had painted Baby Jesus in the manger, with Mary and Joseph watching over him. How could she picture the scene so vividly? How did she know? Was it because she heard the story every night with the Advent calendar or sang it with ‘Away in a Manger’?”
Now, the Napiers display Helen’s artwork every year at Christmas to remind them of Christmas’s ultimate gift—Jesus.
Movieguide previously reported on a reason why Christmas is close to the Napier’s hearts:
Erin said, “Some people consider my husband, Ben, and me a Christmas couple. I like that. Not just because it’s my favorite holiday and Ben is into Christmas year-round. But because our love story is so connected to Christmas—it’s a part of who we are as a couple. The presents, the ornaments, the food, the songs, the scents, the lights and all that our family does to celebrate Jesus’ birth. The magic and joy of the season are a feast for all the senses God has given us.”
When Erin and Ben were in college, Erin worked as a design director for the yearbook. The yearbook did a feature on Ben, and they met when he came in to do an interview for the article. Three days later, they were on their first date to look at Christmas lights. After three more days, they knew they had each found their soulmate.
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s why we call that week in December ‘love week,’” Erin said.
“Every December, Ben and I celebrate ‘love week’ by doing the same things we did during those first six days. Have lunch at our alma mater’s cafeteria, get cheese sticks from Sonic and ride in an old car to look at the lights in Mason Park,” Napier shared.
A few days ago, she recapped that love story for her newer Instagram followers.
On Tuesday, she said, “…When the first week of December comes, the part of me that will always be 19 feels the week Ben became mine. It’s been 19 years, so I’ve now been with Ben for as long as I had been alive when we met. But I still have that urge to listen to the songs we listened to, go to those places we went again, the rituals of our meeting and the beginning of us that became a family. I didn’t actually know @scotsman.co (Ben) before December 7, 2004 but I wanted to so badly. It’s almost Love Week…”
On Wednesday, Napier shared a photo of a typewritten note from Ben:
Good Morning!!!
December 6th, 2004 would be the last morning I woke up and spent a day without you. Unfocused, undriven, uncaring, and unkempt. I was not looking for you, I am so happy that God gave me you! I can’t wait to spend another love week with you.
I love you,
Big
She captioned the photo, “The day before. It was unseasonably warm that day, and I missed the way the heater smelled when it kicked on in my dorm. I was a sophomore in college. I was 19 years old. On that day, we didn’t know we would someday be married — sharing a last name and a queen size bed. The day before you met The One, they were just someone with their own life, their own separate story, and a plan that did not include you. And then, everything changes…”
In her Guideposts article, Napier recalled one of the most memorable Christmas gifts she had ever been given: a toy kitchen at age three.
She recently passed down her love for make-believe “cooking” to her daughters.
“A few years ago, my cousin Jim and my best friend, Mallorie, got a toy kitchen for their daughter, and Ben helped them set it up. We had no idea how much work it took,” she said. “They weren’t finished till well after midnight Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve 2019, Ben was up late building another tiny kitchen for our first-born, and the tradition continues.”
Real-life cooking and family recipes also hold a lot of sentiment for Napier. When her grandmother passed in 2020, Napier “took photos of each room, exactly as she had left them, so we would always remember the Christmases and birthdays and Sundays spent around her dinner table and her out-of-tune piano. I found a few cookbooks but not her recipes.”
When it came time to donate the last of her grandmother’s items to Goodwill, ceramic canisters flew out of a piece of furniture that the Napiers were moving. In them were the long-lost recipes.
“They were stuffed to the brim with her hand-written recipes. Peanut brittle, my cousin Jim’s favorite Christmas cake, spaghetti and meatballs, her famous creamy layered dessert called Chocolate Delight. It felt like a wink from heaven, God letting Mammaw give us one final gift that would carry on in us and in our children,” Napier said.
She continued, “I took those recipes, scanned them into my computer and put them together, along with the photos I took, in a book. Everyone in our family got a copy on Christmas morning. They all cried.”
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