Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani Have Formed Unique Christmas Traditions Together
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani's first Christmas as a married couple is right around the corner, but before they made it official, they spent several years dating — long enough for the pair to establish holiday traditions together.
During an extensive interview on From Apple Music With Love, the platform's holiday special, Shelton and Stefani explain that they've already gotten a head start on developing their family traditions, and at least one of those is a little outside-the-box.
"We go out of our way to find a recipe. And it's always got to be the most difficult thing you can imagine, whether it's, like, a Beef Wellington — which, I didn't even know what that was until I met you," Shelton tells Stefani.
"The fact that you wanted to make a tradition out of ... it's almost like an anti-tradition, because a tradition is something that you've done your whole life, and that you keep repeating," Stefani replies. "But you keep trying to not repeat and make something new again and again and again. And that's your tradition."
But that focus on trying new things, particularly for the holidays, isn't common in many families, including Stefani's, she points out.
"[It] makes me really uncomfortable, because growing up as a child, my parents were very traditional," she says. "So the idea that now I somehow have control over what we're actually putting in our mouths at Christmas, it makes me feel like I'm going to get in trouble ... So anyways, thank you for pushing me, pushing me to find new creative ways to feed our family."
Of course, there's nothing wrong with longstanding family traditions, and the Shelton-Stefani household is no stranger to those Christmas customs, either. But Shelton says that one of the "craziest" ways of celebrating the holidays he's ever seen came from Stefani's family.
"One of the craziest things that I learned about you and your family, as far as holiday traditions go, is the wrapping paper wall the kids run through," he tells her. "And I'm not kidding when I talk about how serious this is to the Stefanis. Is that something you just started with Kingston first? Or is that something that you guys did as kids, that your parents did? Because I've never known you to take anything more serious when it comes to a party type thing than this wrapping paper wall that they run through."
That tradition, Stefani says, didn't start with her — it actually started with her dad. "When there's a serious moment, you've got to know that it didn't come from me. It came from Dennis Stefani," she explains.
"When we were kids growing up, we had a hallway with all the bedrooms and then there was the living room. Basically, the toys and presents and everything, and the tree [was in that room]," Stefani goes on to say. "The opening to that room ... was all covered with wrapping paper and a big bow. And we had to actually crash through it to see what Santa brought. Basically we did that our whole lives."
Elsewhere in the interview, Stefani and Shelton discuss all things Christmas, as well as sharing some behind-the-scenes stories about their relationship, their duets and more. Listen to the full interview on Apple Music.