Dolly Parton Shares Holiday Traditions, Fond Memories and Her Prayer for 2025 (EXCLUSIVE)
The country songstress gets into the spirit of the holidays during this intimate tell-all
Faith, family and music are an integral part of Dolly Parton’s life every day of the year, but there’s something about the Christmas season that seems to make them even more precious. And as the big day approaches, Dolly is gearing up to celebrate.
“My family is made up of musical people,” Dolly tells Woman’s World in an intimate sit-down interview for our latest Christmas cover (get your copy here). “Everybody brings their musical instruments when we do get a chance to get together and we just love to play songs and have all the good food that we’re used to. Everybody cooks certain things.”
“We go to each other’s houses around here,” adds Dolly, who lives in Nashville, “and then we try to go up home [to East Tennessee] so we can visit with the brothers and sisters and the older ones that can’t travel 200 miles.”
Fans can recreate some of the tasty holiday dishes Dolly’s family enjoys thanks to Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals—A Lifetime of Family Friends and Food, the new book Dolly wrote with her sister Rachel Parton George and friend Maurice Miner. “We just wanted everybody to feel like family,” she says. “We talked about family and how we love to cook. Working on the book, we got to cook together, and I loved that family time, that sister time. We’ve really put together some great recipes and plans where you can get from your cocktails to your appetizers, the meal and your dessert. It’s all planned out for you.”
Christmas memories from her childhood
“I loved growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee,” says Dolly, the fourth of 12 children born to Robert and Avie Lee Parton. “We always cut down our own tree. Mama used to make ornaments and we’d string it with popcorn like the old days. I just loved having Christmas with Mama and Daddy and Mama telling us the story of the Christ child. Everybody got to make something for the tree, and we’d make the star out of tin foil that Mama had saved and put it at the top of the tree.”
One of the most memorable Christmases in the Parton family was chronicled in Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love, a 2016 TV movie that shared how the family saved and sacrificed one Christmas to buy Dolly’s mother a wedding ring. “Mom and Dad had been married for years and had a house full of kids and she’d never had a ring,” Dolly shares. “The year that we all went in and helped buy Mama’s wedding band, that was a special one.”
Dolly’s amazing new projects
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s been a busy year for the iconic entertainer. Dolly has been working on a musical set to debut on Broadway in 2026, released two new books, the latest in her Billy the Kid children’s series, Billy the Kid Comes Home for Christmas, and Good Lookin’ Cookin.’
She also dropped Dolly Parton & Family: Smoky Mountain DNA – Family, Faith & Fables, a new 38-song album that features archival tracks from her family of musicians. “It’s a lot of singing with my grandpa and mama and all of them,” she says of the album, which includes “Put It Off Uncle Tomorrow” with her Uncle Bill Owens, “Rosewood Casket” sung with her mom Avie Lee, “Runaway Girl” with her Aunt Dorothy Jo and “Heart Don’t Fail Me Now” with her sister Stella Parton, among the album’s many gems.
Dolly wrote the title song, “Smoky Mountain DNA.” “I’d always said that I should do an album some time and really do old mountain songs,” she says. “I just thought Smoky Mountain DNA was a great title. When we started putting this together, I thought, ‘Oh, I should write a song called “Smoky Mountain DNA.”’ It was the last thing written for the album.”
A beautiful musical family heirloom, Smoky Mountain DNA was five decades in the making. “I was singing and I was crying. It just brought them all back to me. I just had them right in my headphones and right in my heart,” Dolly says of recording the album. “It was a journey, and it was amazing.
“I was so emotional when I was singing with a lot of people who have been dead for years,” she says of adding her voice to songs previously recorded by her loved ones. “We just got where they had just put stuff down on cassettes and Richie Owens, my first cousin, is the one that he put all that together. He’s an engineer too. So he tidied up all those things and added new and different music.”
Dolly’s holiday habits
With two new books and the two-disc family album, Dolly has been busy, but she managed to get her tree up and decorations done by Thanksgiving. “The day after Thanksgiving, I turn all my lights on outside and all my lights on inside,” she says. “I just love going to Christmas plays and all the things that. I love to ride around with the kids to see all the decorations in the neighborhoods.”
Though many women experience the blues after all the holiday fun is over, Dolly says she’s not one of them. “I cannot wait for it all to be over,” she laughs. “I love it better than anything while it’s going but then come the first week after and I take up all of my Christmas decorations and all that. I can’t wait for it to be gone.”
Dolly Parton’s prayer for 2025
As she looks toward 2025, Dolly is leaning on her faith and always has an active prayer life. “I’m praying to always do good,” Dolly says. “I always ask God to show me how I can do things that would uplift people and glorify God. And as I always say, I pray that I’ll have enough to share and enough to spare. I want to be able to do good, and I just pray for God to give me strength and the energy and to direct me and lead me and to show me what it is that I need to do, where I’m most needed. And to give me the stamina and the strength to carry it out.”
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