Dolly Parton Dresses Up as ‘Granny Claus’ at Christmas
"I go up and get presents from upstairs, and I come down the chimney in my suit," she explains.
Dolly Parton is definitely one Country artist who is identified strongly with the Christmas season. Her 1982 recording of “Hard Candy Christmas” ranks among the top Yuletide songs of the genre, and her 1997 Once Upon A Christmas album with Kenny Rogers stands as one the best-selling holiday records of all time. In addition, the past two seasons have seen highly-rated TV-movies on the NBC network dealing with some of Parton’s childhood memories.
Speaking of children, though she and husband Carl never had any children of their own, she definitely looks forward to making the dreams of the youngsters in her family come true, as she told Sounds Like Nashville recently.
“I’m like a child at Christmas,” she says. “I’ve got so many nieces and nephews that I love and they love me. They call me ‘Gi-Gi.’ When my husband and I married fifty years ago, we brought several of my younger brothers and sisters to live with us. So, they went to school, and were kind of like our kids. When they started having kids, they were like our grandkids. Those kids would call me ‘Aunt Granny’ – they had a grandmother, and my husband ‘Uncle Pe Pop.’ Then, when those nieces and nephews started having children, I became a great-grandma. So, I’m Gi-Gi to them. I have all of these nieces and nephews that come to my house. We do cookie night every year, and have for years. I dress up like Santa Claus, ‘Granny Claus,’ we call it. I have an elevator in my house, and I have it painted like a chimney. I go up and get presents from upstairs, and I come down the chimney in my suit. To me, I can’t wait do to that with them.”
Parton recently helped raise more than $9 million for the people affected by the devastating wildfires in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge through the Smoky Mountains Rise: A Benefit for the My People Fund telethon. Today, the iconic entertainer releases Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love to DVD and Blu-ray. The movie will re-air on NBC December 23 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
