Chip Gaines once said his childhood Christmas festivities were treated like a ballgame, which makes sense, as he was a ballplayer. But, more specifically, his father would give an inspiring speech and let the two Gaines kids burst through a paper wall, just like “the home team at the homecoming football game.”
It wasn’t Chip’s sport of choice back then, but that still sounds like a lot of fun. Now, Chip and Joanna have done things differently with their five children. And they’ve established longstanding family traditions so good they’ve stuck.
Chip and Joanna Gaines’ family Christmas traditions
As parents of five children, Chip and Joanna have developed a few Christmas morning traditions for their family. To start, Joanna bakes the same treat every year, preparing fresh cinnamon rolls.
Like many other families, they also put up a Christmas tree with their kids annually. First, they pick their tree from the farm and bring it home in November because they’ll have a prime choice for a large, fragrant one. Then, they put the tree up and decorate it with the kids.
Joanna shared that this tradition is particularly bittersweet for her. “This family tree gets me every time,” she wrote on Instagram. “Emmie asked why I always get so sad when we put this tree up, and I told her it’s a good kinda sad.”
Chip has one sister Shannon Braun, and their parents moved the family from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Colleyville, Texas, when he was in third grade (The Dallas Morning News). He revealed that in his childhood, his father would put decorated butcher paper over the doorway into their family room to keep the kids out leading up to the holiday.
“No one was allowed to go in the family room or peek behind the paper until Christmas morning,” Chip shared in Magnolia Journal (per Us Weekly).
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On the big day, Chip’s dad would “make an inspired speech like a coach would to his team” before giving the kids the signal.
Then, as the Magnolia Network star described, “Bam! We’d tear through the paper, just like the home team at the homecoming football game.”
Chip Gaines’ parents thought he would be a ‘superstar baseball player’ before ‘Fixer Upper’
The Gaines family might have pulled inspiration from football games on Christmas morning, but that wasn’t Chip’s sport of choice in his youth.
Long before Chip and Joanna married and achieved superstardom through their HGTV show, Fixer Upper, he was a baseball player hoping to play for Baylor University. However, he didn’t make the team.
“It was devastating,” his mother, Gayle Gaines, said (The Dallas Morning News). “We were just all heartbroken.”
“I thought we were raising the next great superstar baseball player,” his father, Bob Gaines, added. “Instead, I raised the next great father, husband, and businessman, and now he’s famous.”
Gayle noted they laugh about it now, explaining, “Because we spent a lot of time trying to fit him into a box he didn’t fit into.”
