Jeans and Jesus’s Birth: How Kristin Chenoweth Learned the True Meaning of Christmas
By Movieguide® Contributor
At 16, actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth wanted Gloria Vanderbilt jeans more than anything, but that year, a thoughtful present her mom gave her would help her realize the true gift of Christmas.
“Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. The year I was 16, that’s all I wanted for Christmas. I dreamed of a gorgeously wrapped box waiting for me under the tree with the only present that mattered,” the FOUR CHRISTMASES star said in a Guideposts essay.
“I imagined all the heads that would turn as I walked down the halls of my Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, high school in my sleek new Vanderbilts,” she continued.
“My parents wanted to make my older brother, Mark, and me happy, but they also knew what was best for us. Like when Mark had his heart set on a set of big tires for his truck one Christmas…and what did he get? Contacts. For his eyes. What a disappointment. Ah, contacts. It became a kind of joke between the two of us when something didn’t go our way,” Chenoweth said.
But being raised by her parents is one of Chenoweth’s biggest blessings.
“That I ended up being raised by Mom and Dad was an extraordinary gift in itself, a blessing I thank God for every day of my life,” she said. “I was adopted as an infant. My birth mom, who wasn’t prepared to raise a child, did the bravest and most generous thing by giving me up.”
“Mom happened to be in the same hospital, having just had a hysterectomy, with no hope of conceiving the daughter she and Dad wanted so badly.” She continued, “That she managed to connect with my birth mother, whose original plans of adoption had just fallen through, seemed like God’s will.”
Chenoweth doesn’t share others’ pity for her adoption. She believes that God chose the best parents for her.
“I got the exact set of parents I was supposed to have,” she said.
“My dad always says, ‘Man, did we win the lottery,’ and I always say, ‘No, I won the lottery,'” Chenoweth said on the TODAY show.
She told the Local Moms Network about one of her favorite Christmas traditions that her mother started. Each year at Christmas, Chenoweth’s mom would take out a ceramic candle Christmas tree, and they would pass it around on Christmas Eve. Afterward, each person would say what they’re grateful for the past year.
“Mom and Dad worked hard to give Mark and me all the wonderful things we had and the opportunity to do all the things we loved,” she said. “I don’t think I could ever thank them enough…That’s why from the time I was a little girl I always wanted to give Mom the best gift at Christmas.”
So, one summer, Chenowith saved every penny she had to buy her mother an antique crystal brooch for Christmas.
Then, “Bingo. I was set for Christmas, kind of forgetting that I didn’t have any money left to buy something for Dad and Mark. They understood. We all understood. It made Mom happy, that one big gift. Like those Gloria Vanderbilt jeans I was hankering after a few years later. Don’t worry, I’m getting to that part,” she said.
“Our high school didn’t have a big arts program back then, so the only way I could make my mark as a performer was dancing on the pom-pom squad,” she explained. “I was a Tigette, cheering on the Broken Arrow Tigers. Go, team! Our colors were black and gold.”
“That year I was 16, we got out the Christmas decorations. We put carols on the stereo, made hot chocolate, set out the Advent calendar and the crèche and started counting down the days,” she said.
When the day came, they “finally settled down to hand out the big presents from under the tree. My box looked big, easily big enough for a pair of jeans.”
She said, “I untied the ribbon…Only to see…what?”
“A Tigette letter jacket, black and gold with ‘Kristi’ (that’s what I went by in those days!) stitched on the front and my graduation year on the sleeve. Those butterflies in my stomach flew away real fast. Oh, I knew the jacket was a big deal: made to order and expensive. And we weren’t a rich family.”
“Getting your letter jacket is a big high school moment, right up there with getting your class ring. But for a Christmas present? When I was totally expecting those Gloria Vanderbilt jeans?”
With both guilt and gratitude, Chenoweth accepted the gift.
“I thought of that brooch that had made Mom so happy, and me so happy and excited to give it to her. This was not the gift I expected, the gift that I wanted, the fancy designer jeans I wanted everybody to see me in. Yet suddenly…”
Chenoweth then realized how remarkable a gift Jesus was to the world and the similarity between her and Jesus’ birth.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our crèche and God’s son asleep in the manger. He too had the perfect adoptive parents of sorts, whom God had entrusted him to, Mary and Joseph, standing over him. At once, something happened inside me, disappointment becoming transformed and transforming me in the process,” she explained.
“Jesus wasn’t the Messiah—the gift—that many people expected. Not that king who would reign from a palace, the powerful figure Herod feared would lead mighty armies with his sword.”
“He was but an infant born to a mere carpenter and his teenage bride from the tiny town of Nazareth…And who was it who first came to worship him? Shepherds, the lowliest in that world’s pecking order…guided by angels who appeared to them in the heavens.
She continued, “The light of the universe did come, a child who would indeed grow up to change the world but through love and compassion and understanding and a sacrificial death that defied all expectations.”
“On that first Christmas, Jesus entered our world in so humble a way that no one could have imagined it. Yet he was the gift all mankind needed.
“I grew up that Christmas when I was 16. I learned that what is given in love should be accepted with love. How proud I was wearing that jacket,” she said.
That Christmas gift had an everlasting double effect on Chenoweth. Each Christmas, she is filled with gratitude for God’s and her parents’ love.
Movieguide® reported on the death of Chenoweth’s birth mother in August of this year:
“Mamalynn prayed for me every year on my birthday, hoping I was having the most perfect life, which of course, I was. I snuck away and prayed for her too, wishing that someday I would be allowed [to] tell her ‘thank you.’ Which I did on 12/12/12. A beautiful day!”
“We didn’t leave anything unsaid in the end,” Chenoweth finished. “I will miss her till the end of my days. But then, I will fly into the sky, where she will be waiting to greet me, and she will say, ‘start singing Babygirl!’ And I will.”
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