Candace Cameron Bure Is Keeping Things Simple and Celebrating Her Faith This Season
As enjoyable as the holidays can be, more often than not your Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa celebration "to-do" list can feel overwhelming. And during a rollercoaster year like 2020, fraught with disappointment, loss, and change, this holiday season is likely to feel particularly trying. That's part of the reason why actress Candace Cameron Bure has decided to cut back a bit on her Christmas traditions this year.
"Sometimes it's like, 'Oh, I have to bake this and decorate that, and I want it all to be perfect, and I have to find the perfect gifts for people,' and it can become consuming and stressful," she tells Woman's Day. "So, we've simplified Christmas." For Bure, holiday simplification means putting up just a few of her favorite decorations and focusing more on being thankful for the people around her than trying to make the holiday season
perfect. "I'm just grateful for my family, that we're all as close as we are, and I don't ever want to take that for granted," she says.
Even though she's simplifying Christmas and putting more of an emphasis on gratitude, Bure still very much values the family time she receives during the holidays. Most years, she and around 40 of her family members gather at her brother's house to celebrate Christmas together. But with COVID-19 cases continuing to soar and hospitals across the country reaching capacity, Bure has accepted that her holidays will look a little different this year. Her parents will probably join Bure, her husband Val, and their three kids at their house on Dec. 25, she says, but as for seeing the rest of her loved ones, "I think we'll be doing Christmas over Zoom with all the extended family."
Deciding to put more of an emphasis on practicing gratitude this year isn't just a byproduct of the pandemic. Acknowledging all they're thankful for is a family tradition of sorts, especially during the holiday season. Bure says her family uses the holidays as a way to remind themselves of the reason for their season: the birth of Jesus Christ.
"He is the greatest gift of all, and that's why we give gifts to one another," she says. "So, I just love to focus on that." She and her family also take their faith a step further by finding ways to help others throughout the holiday season. "How can we use either our platform, our time, our resources, our money? How can we be an encouragement to other people?" she says. "Charity work has been a big part of my life, and I've always tried to have my kids participate in that, and they do that now as adults."
Most Christmas mornings, Bure and her family help others by serving at a homeless shelter, but since they can't do so this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they're looking for new ways to help, like gathering gifts for people in their community or donating to organizations they believe in. Bure especially loves partnering with The Salvation Army on Giving Tuesday and throughout the holiday season. (She's done it three years in a row.) "They do so much, so much more than I ever realized, to be honest, [until] I started working with them," she says. "They provide food and shelter, but they [also] provide emotional care and spiritual care and therapy and counseling and job training."
Every year at Christmastime, the Salvation Army sets up their iconic red kettles outside of stores to collect donations, but because of the pandemic there are less kettles around this year and less people shopping in-person. So, the organization has launched virtual red kettles in order to Rescue Christmas. But their "work doesn't stop at the holidays. They are always helping, all year long," Bure says. "What I do love about The Salvation Army is that whatever you donate stays within your community."
As simple as Bure's Christmas celebrations will be this year, she did keep on yearly tradition on her holiday "to-do" list: starring in a Hallmark Christmas movie. In 2020's If I Only Had Christmas, the actress plays a publicist, Darcy, who visits the Emerald Educational Trust to do some pro-bono work for the company's vice president, Glen Goodman (Warren Christie), who doesn't actually want her help.
"I'm so excited about this one," Bure says. "If I Only Had Christmas is a nod to my all-time favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz." In the new movie, the stars quote lines from the original, and there are a lot of character name references and other messages throughout. "Of course, a love story ensues," Bure says, "and we have a happy ending 'cause it's a Hallmark movie!"
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