Savannah Guthrie was born on Dec. 27, so the TODAY co-anchor knows a thing or two about how to make a Christmas-week birthday feel special.
“Never do a combo gift. Set something aside that’s just for the birthday,” Savannah tells TODAY.com. “And don’t give birthday gifts on Christmas. You know, don’t say, ‘Oh here, open it now, it’s your birthday.’ Let them wait until their birthday … so that they, too, have a day that’s special for them.”
Savannah's late father, Charles Guthrie, was born on Christmas Day.
“We never remembered to say ‘Happy Birthday’ until about 9 o’clock that night,” Savannah says. “Poor thing.”
In 2020, Savannah recalled how her dad would read from the Bible on Christmas Eve.
“We always really loved that, because I think it connected us to the holiday in a really spiritual and significant way,” Savannah shared in the TODAY special “Holidays in My House." “Even as kids, we loved that moment of just being at my father’s knee and feeling that there was really something eternally special about this day.”
Savannah also remembered how he would tease them and pretend “there was no way” the kids could open any of their gifts early.
“But always, always, on Christmas Eve he would relent and say ‘OK, just one’ and so we would always get to pick one Christmas present to open on Christmas Eve,’” she said in the video. “We would open up a present and he’d say, ‘Let’s open them all!’ and then we’d say ‘No, Dad, no, we have to wait until Christmas!’ That was just a really sweet tradition we had with my dad.”
Savannah was 16 when Charles died from a heart attack.
“I think we hold on to Christmas even harder now, because it’s a tie to him, and a tie to the past and to our memories,” Savannah revealed. “So Christmas just absolutely lives in my heart and lives in our family and I will spend every minute I have making sure my kids feel that magic, too.”