Kirk Cameron, Candace Cameron Bure ‘Open’ Favorite Family Christmas Memories
By Movieguide® Contributor
Candace Cameron Bure recently made an appearance on TAKEAWAYS WITH KIRK CAMERON to open “gifts from the Cameron Christmas past” with her older brother.
The siblings took turns opening gifts that contained reminders of past Christmases. Bure started it off with a small model of a Christmas tree.
“Do you remember the one year…Mom and Dad went out to the forest and cut down the Christmas tree, and then when we brought it home, we decorated it, but then it got…infested with bugs?” Bure asked.
“That wasn’t a good tree,” Cameron said.
But which tree did Bure like the best throughout the years? Her grandparents’ tree that “snowed” by itself.
“They had this tree in their house that was like it snowed,” Bure said. “So the flocking in the snow would come down on the tree, and there was a big basin at the bottom, and then it would catch it, but then it would kind of suck it up in a vacuum right through the center of the tree, and then the snow would keep flowing out.”
“I loved that tree. It was our favorite Christmas tree ever,” Cameron said.
“I loved it, too!” Bure said.
Next, Cameron opened up a Christmas tree ornament with bears on it.
“That reminds me of all of our Christmases in Big Bear, California. We had a home there,” Bure said.
Cameron reminisced, “That house was a gathering place for all of our friends and family, and we had so many adventures and great Christmases there.”
The FULL HOUSE actress agreed. “So many people—that’s what I remember most—because it was always so full in there. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends from all over. Even some families from Make-A-Wish…And it was just like a revolving door. Everyone would be up there, and we kind of all pick a day to go skiing, and, you know, Mom would stay back with some of the other ladies, and they’d be cooking dinner.”
Not only did Big Bear remind the siblings of family, friends and love but also of one year’s icy lake rescue.
“Do you remember the time when Mom rescued your dog?…The lake was like freezing, almost frozen over, and your dog got caught out in the water because she loved the water,” Cameron said.
“There was something she got tangled in, and Mom, I mean freezing, and all she was just like ‘I’m going!’…That was mom. She ran in, and she rescued her,” Bure said.
Bure next pulled out a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree—a skimpy small tree with a single ball ornament.
“We had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree one year in Big Bear,” Bure said.
At the time, the Camerons had just rented a temporary home from Tracey Gold, who starred as Cameron’s younger sister on GROWING PAINS.
“I believe it was Christmas Eve,” Bure continued, “and we’d only gotten up there the day before, and so on Christmas Eve we drove to the tree lot thinking, oh, we’ll just get a tree. ‘Cause we didn’t have a tree yet, and it was closed. There were no trees. It was like, who’s buying a tree on Christmas Eve?”
“And it was so disappointing, and there were a lot of us there, and I remember…we just got the branches from the pine trees that were laying on the ground, and we gathered as many branches and sticks and pine cones as we could,” the actress continued. “And we taped the branches on the wall, and then we just like stuck some popcorn on them so we could decorate it. And we had this Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”
Cameron said, “Isn’t that great, though, that you don’t have to have this great, big, beautiful Christmas tree in order for it to be special? These are the kinds of things that we…I don’t even remember the great big great Christmas trees. We remember the Charlie Brown tree.“
The siblings then looked at a nativity set in front of them. It reminded them of a nativity their mom used to set out, but they wouldn’t understand its significance until much later.
“Every year, mom would put the Nativity and the baby Jesus under the tree or on the mantle,” Cameron said. “And she would say this is baby Jesus; this is what Christmas is about. But I don’t think we ever really understood it. We didn’t really go to church as a family. We didn’t talk about God, and it just seemed like this mysterious religious part of Christmas to me.”
Bure said, “I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t give it much thought. I’m kind of like, yeah, I guess maybe there was one out, but it was definitely not the focus.”
Cameron added, “Now I think, my goodness, this is everything.”
In Cameron’s household, the nativity never gets put away. It’s up all year on a shelf in the kitchen because Cameron doesn’t want to forget the importance of Jesus’ life.
“I feel like of everything that I want to have as a decoration, I want to remember that here’s this little baby who was born to die,” Cameron said. “From that eternal perspective, the father Son and Holy Spirit knew that that was the plan from the moment he enters into the story, he is a baby born to die. And King Herod was all out to kill him; he had all the young boys murdered in an attempt to kill him, but God preserved him so that he would die at the right time so the rest of us could live.”
Movieguide® recently reported why Bure thinks Christmas is a great time to share the gospel:
“I never thought that I would be known for Christmas in my career, truly,” Bure laughed, referring to her many popular Christmas movies, while on an episode of brother Kirk Cameron’s TAKEAWAYS. “It is something that I absolutely love. I’m so grateful to God that…I get to make Christmas movies, and people are going to come to know them and love them, and I get to look forward to making them every year.”
“…It is the easiest and most perfect time to actually share the gospel message and share God and Jesus with people,” the actress said. “So I love that God has given me a platform, or a talent and an ability that I get to make these.”
Bure’s most recent Christmas movie came out on Great American Family last month. In MY CHRISTMAS HERO, Bure stars as a doctor who serves military service members. When a patient with a sprained knee comes in to get treated, an unstoppable Christmas romance begins.
The star posted a video on Nov. 1 of her complete Christmas setup. The day after Halloween, she already had her house decked out with a Christmas tree, ornaments, and a chimney complete with stockings and gifts.
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