Melissa Chan-Green, Patrick Gower and Kim Crossman have shared their Christmas plans. Photos / Instagram @melchangreen, @kimcrossman, Warner Bros. Discover
Melissa Chan-Green, Patrick Gower and Kim Crossman have shared their Christmas plans. Photos / Instagram @melchangreen, @kimcrossman, Warner Bros. Discover
Have you ever wondered how your favourite Kiwi stars spend Christmas? Do they get up and read the newspaper? Eat chocolate for breakfast with their kids? Is it spent at church? Do they veto the day completely and escape to Fiji? Well, wonder no more.
The Christmas season is all about giving and this year, Patrick Gower, Melissa Chan-Green, PJ Harding and many more of your favourite Kiwi stars have gifted us a sneak peek at their festive plans.
From whitebait fritters for breakfast to adopting their partner’s traditions, the Herald chats to some of the country’s most well-known names to find out how they’re spending the holiday season - and the answers are truly as wholesome as you’d imagine.
Paddy Gower Has Issues host Patrick Gower. Photo / Warner Bros. Discovery
It’s been a huge year for the popular journalist. With multiple documentaries including Patrick Gower: On The Royals and Patrick Gower on Vaping, he’s also launched his new show, Paddy Gower Has Issues and won a NZTV Award for Best Presenter: News and Current Affairs. So, it’s no surprise his Christmas plans include lots of great kai, relaxing beach walks and a classic festive film.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. I love Scrooged. It is a 1988 movie starring Bill Murray and an absolute must-watch! Highly recommend.
It is actually based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Bill Murray stars as a heartless TV boss. Anyway, the scrooge ends up doing a full circle and doing a speech on live TV about the meaning and magic of Christmas.
“It’s Christmas Eve! The one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be. It’s a ... miracle.” It is an amazing film, I actually will be watching it.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas snack?
A. If I remember to get organised, whitebait fritters for breakfast. The true Kiwi delicacy.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas Day tradition?
A. I got to a Christmas day Catholic mass. I’m not actually religious. But I was raised a Catholic, I go along voluntarily to remember my mum who used to force me to go. Weird I know. A tradition that makes no sense, like all the great traditions!
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. I used to look forward to getting on the grog [alcohol]. I don’t drink anymore, so now I actually look forward to not getting on the grog.
It is truly a fantastic feeling to be down the beach in the arvo sober and enjoying the waves. I look forward to that.
Anyone with children knows Christmas is never as magical as it is when you’ve got young kids - especially Chan-Green. The AM host shares her holiday plans which include enjoying her favourite holiday film, organising a sweet treat for Santa and spending time on the beach with her kids.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. Turning off the 3am alarm and building sandcastles with the kids.
Matty McLean
Matty McLean. Photo / TVNZ
It’s been an emotional couple of weeks for the former Breakfast host, which is why he’s planning to take it easy this Christmas and New Year. As well as celebrating his one-year wedding anniversary, he might get a little bit competitive during the family Christmas games.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. My go-to I think would usually be Home Alone. Every year I decide which one I like better out of Home Alone 1 or 2 and this year I feel like it’s a Home Alone 2, lost in New York kind of a year.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas snack?
A. I’m from Central Otago so I like a good bowl of cherries. I just like devour them.
A. We play this game in my family that my brother brought back from his exchange year that he did in Denmark. We get a whole heap of tiny, funny little presents and you all just like wrap them and put them in the middle and Mum sets a timer and we all go around in a circle and roll a dice and if you roll a six you get to pick a present from the middle.
Once everyone’s got a present from the middle then if you roll a six you need to steal a present from someone and you just keep going and keep stealing presents from each other until the timer goes out and then however many presents you end up with at the end of the game is what you end up with.
It gets really ruthless and someone always gets ganged up on.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. It’s my and my husband’s first anniversary on New Year’s Eve so we’ll be celebrating our first wedding anniversary, which is pretty amazing. We also have really awesome nieces and nephews who are the perfect age to celebrate Christmas with, so I’m really excited to be with them and live that Christmas magic through their eyes.
Kim Crossman and her fiancé Tom Walsh are spending the holidays at the beach.
The TV star and her fiancé Tom Walsh are currently cruising around the South Island looking for the perfect wedding location but once they’ve seen the West Coast, eaten a cheese roll and stayed in an alpine hut, they’re off to spend the holiday season with their family.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. Home Alone or Love Actually! I am a huge fan of The Amazing Race (I think Tom and I would be the perfect contestants) so it’s hard for me to watch anything else at the moment haha.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas snack?
A. I love Christmas ham and the microwave Christmas pudding with custard! Tom’s family are amazing chefs so I think this year I will be stepping it up from my microwave desserts!
A. Santa literately ticks us off his list. We all wake up with a tick on the bottom of our foot if he has delivered us presents. We think it’s because there are so many of us he needs to cross-check the list.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. The good energy and attitudes and weather. I think there is something so special about long days at the beach, being outdoors and not having anywhere you have to be that really brings out the best in everyone. We are always in Pauanui in the Coromandel. We have a giant water slide and everyone just loves hanging out with each other – you can’t beat it!
Jesse Mulligan
Jesse Mulligan is indulging in some classic Christmas treats this year. Photo / Babiche Martens for Viva
He recently said goodbye to The Projectbut never fear Mulligan fans, it’s not the last we will see of the media personality. He dabbles in multiple projects including hosting RNZ’s Afternoons show and being Viva’s dining out editor. So, what kind of feast is the food expert cooking up this Christmas? A surprising - and traditional - one it seems.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. As a couple Love Actually is our Christmas movie and I can’t wait to share it with the kids one day, but annoyingly there’s that scene where Tim from The Office is acting out the moves from a porno film. Most adult moments from movies you can sort of cough and distract your way through but I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that one. So that wonderful (and slightly problematic these days) movie will sadly have to wait another couple of years I think.
A. I like anything you don’t get to eat at other times of year. Ham on the bone! Pavlova! Though actually one year I tried to put the former in the oven while my wife was baking the latter and, well, we don’t talk about that day in our house.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas Day tradition?
A. I grew up with a lot of wonderful Christmas traditions and my wife grew up with her own, different traditions. In the spirit of partnership and equality, as a family we’ve adopted all her ones. Though we have developed a couple of new ones together including the Christmas Eve meal - when all the shopping and preparation is done, and the presents are wrapped and our four beautiful children are finally in bed, we open a bottle of bubbles and eat expensive seafood that we’re too cheap to buy the rest of the year.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. I know I should say relaxing but I’m pretty relaxed year round. If anything my brain gets a bit bored over summer waiting for the new year of work to start. Still, I love hanging out with Victoria and kids without the stress of early starts and finding school shoes - and I’ll be spending hours in my kayak fishing for snapper, the only time in my life where I’m not checking the time and thinking about what’s next.
PJ Harding will be spending the holiday season with her partner and son. Photo / Instagram @pjdeejay
She’s the newly announced host of The Hits - Drive with Matty McLean but before she can jump back in the radio hot seat next year, Harding is spending her festive season with her partner, son and extended family.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A. I’m a Love Actually, The Holiday kind of girl (basic I know) but also keen to watch Home Alone again. It’s been years and after rewatching Schitt’s Creek lately I need my Moira fix!
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas snack?
A. Leftover Christmas ham. All day every day. Until it’s a health hazard.
A. It sounds really wrong on paper but it actually wasn’t weird at the time. Dad used to always do nude runs round the garden and climb on the roof, it was mad chaos … Now he’s longer with us someone else in the family needs to step up.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. Being by the beach, getting sunshine, my 16-month-old son Charlie playing with his cuzzies and maybe getting through a book.
Mitch McCann
Newshub US correspondent Mitch McCann. Photo / Warner Bros. Discovery
Newshub’s US correspondent will be spending his 2023 Christmas in New York with his wife Olivia Schwass. The pair relocated to America in 2022 and while they didn’t quite get the fairy-tale white Christmas last year, they’re hoping for one this year.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
A.The Holiday. (Yes this is a Christmas movie and a much better one than Love Actually, thank you very much.)
A. Russian Fudge (is that a Christmas snack?) My nana in Ashburton makes it for our family every year - and I’m still hopeful that one day she will share the recipe.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas Day tradition?
A. It’s a reasonably new one for us - Secret Santa - and the version where you can steal each other’s presents. I’m surprised we’re still talking at the end of it sometimes.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
A. Fingers crossed it will snow at our place in New York - it’s the only good thing about Christmas when it’s freezing. Merry Christmas!
Toni, Sam and Jase of Coast Breakfast. Photo / Instagram @tonistreet
Mariah Carey might be the world’s Queen of Christmas but Coast radio co-host Toni Street is ours. Toni and her co-hosts Sam Wallace and Jason Reeves have created a very festive environment in the Coast studio this year. From their Coast Christmas video to the studio’s Christmas grotto, they have done so much and now they’re ready to sign off and celebrate the holiday season with their families.
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
Toni: Hands down Home Alone, probably two or three times.
Sam: Brando, my 4-year-old, does enjoy Prep and Landing – which is on Disney, it’s about a miserable elf who thinks Christmas is just a job. We have recently been pushing some wholesome classics on them and the winners so far are Labyrinth and the Wizard of Oz.
Jase: I’m not ashamed to say that we’ve already watched Home Alone and Elf this season, but the absolute fave I always watch on Christmas Eve is the unbeatable Love Actually. All the storylines are great - but Hugh Grant steals the movie in my humble opinion.
Toni: Nuts and Bolts (a combination of Nutri-Grain and peanuts with lots of spices) or my homemade Christmas bark, I get a bit of stick for it now because I have a different themed bark for every occasion.
Sam: But because I’m on a giant healthy eating kick, I would have to say NZ cherries. The growers took a weather beating this year so they are a rare commodity. That and probably a brandy snap, which I only tend to see at Christmas.
Jase: Nana used to make these amazing marshmallow truffles, and now Mum makes them to keep the tradition alive. She also makes Nuts and Bolts and this year Toni kindly made some and brought it in to the Coast studio during our last show of the year - it was phenomenal.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas Day tradition?
Toni: Everyone wearing a Christmas headband of some kind at the dinner table. That and eating alcoholic Crunchie bar icecream.
Sam: We have a tradition where we unwrap the presents and screw up the paper and throw it at Poppa (my dad), we all sit around laughing at the constant impacts.
Jase: Christmas songs must be played when we put up the tree. We also decorate the outside of our home. We donate toys to Hato Hone St John and the Salvation Army (our kids help choose the toys) and we’re lucky ‘cos our two boys are still young (Max is 10 and Olly is 8) so the magic of Christmas is still very much a thing.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
Toni: Slowing down, having no obligations and filling my days with nothingness.
Sam: Giving our kids our undivided attention. Not being distracted by schedules, work and obligations. Watching them thrive with fun and experiences. The years are busy. The summer is about slowing down and enjoying what life should be about. Long hot days, late nights, open fires and friends - I can’t wait.
Jase: This year we’ll be at my mum and dad’s place in Hawke’s Bay with my sister, brother-in-law and their daughters. We haven’t all been together on Christmas Day for a number of years, and we’re all really excited about it.
Jono and Ben
The Hits Breakfast co-hosts Jono and Ben. Photo / Facebook
Q. What festive film will you be watching on Christmas Eve?
We both love watching Home Alone with our families. It’s a great Christmas movie but some really shocking parenting. We are no parenting experts but are pretty confident we’d notice if we left one of our kids home alone.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas snack?
Does onion dip count? Seems to be something that most of us Kiwis consume way too much of over summer. The one Christmas snack we do have issue with is the naming of Christmas mince pies - get a new name if you contain no mince.
Q. What’s your favourite Christmas Day tradition?
Trying to guess the punchline to the Christmas cracker jokes. We are not sure whose jokes are worse - our jokes over the years or ones you find in Christmas crackers.
Q. What are you most looking forward to about the holiday season?
We both love spending time with our families but there’s probably a point where our families have enough of us and are ready for us to both get back to work.
Lillie Rohan is an Auckland-based reporter covering lifestyle and entertainment stories who joined the Herald in 2020. She specialises in all things relationships and dating, Kiwi celebs we can’t help but love and TV shows you simply cannot miss out on.
