When is the “right” time to start listening to Christmas music?
This might be a highly contested debate in your house or among friends. While there will never be an objective “right” time to start listening, we can take the advice from Christmas experts and apply their holly jolly judgment to our own lives.
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Dolly Parton weighed in on the topic in a conversation with TODAY.com.
Parton, who is an unofficial-official Queen of Christmas (she tells TODAY.com that her nieces and nephews literally call her “Christmas Dolly”) is no stranger to getting extra spirited in advance of the Christmas season, especially in 2022.
While Parton has her hands tied with multiple holiday-related projects this year, including the rerelease of her Christmas album “A Holly Dolly Christmas” and a new NBC holiday film “Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas,” she told Better Homes and Gardens that she still makes sure her home is decorated to the nines, with a Christmas tree in every room.
But what about the Christmas music debate? Parton says the answer is really up to you to decide.
“I think it’s anytime we feel like it,” Parton tells TODAY.com. “It makes you feel good and makes you happy!”
But Parton has her own routine. She waits until the day after Thanksgiving to get the holiday tunes going in her Tennessee home.
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Dolly Parton rehearses for the 2016 Christmas in Rockefeller Center in 2016. (NBC)
“I actually start decorating and playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving,” she reveals.
Though she makes exceptions when family is visiting year round. “Some of my little nieces and nephews come to visit me and they always think of me as ‘Christmas,’ because I do such a big deal about it. So they often want me to play Christmas music when they’re visiting with me,” she says.
But how does one “become” Christmas, you may ask? Parton says it’s really just in her DNA.
“I could kind of be like a ‘Christmas Dolly’ or a ‘Dolly for Christmas,’ my name just kind of fits in there,” she says. “My little nieces and nephews love me at Christmas. We have Christmas night and we have cookie night where we make cookies and make the biggest mess in the world! But I just love Christmas songs. I love the Christmas spirit.”
As for a favorite Christmas tune, the country crooner reveals that she doesn’t have just one. She tells TODAY.com she loves everything from “Rudolph” to “White Christmas.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com