Interview: Soap Stars Share the Magic of the Holiday Season, Part 2

Allyson Rice (ex-Connor, “As the World Turns”): I LOVE Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday. I put up an absurd amount of lights in my yard and on my house, including an 8-foot-tall inflated Santa on the roof. They go up immediately after Halloween (none of this after-Thanksgiving nonsense!). Starting last year, I decorate my car in lights as well. I wrap about four strands of multicolored lights all over it and plug them into an adapter inside the car. I have actually started to keep lights up in my house and one strand on the front and back porches throughout the entire year now. It just makes me happy to look at them. I say, Why limit the wonderful festive feeling of the season to only a month or two out of the year? I also make handmade Christmas balls (pictured) that we decorate our tree with, and I give them to family members as Christmas gifts. My grandmother started the tradition, and my dad and I, and now my youngest niece, are the ones who have kept it going, thanks to my mom’s encouragement after my grandmother passed away. I put up an art studio in my backyard earlier this year, where I have all my jewelry-making supplies, and I’ve set aside one corner of the place for my Christmas-ball-decorating supplies as well, so that I can make them year-round, whenever the inspiration hits. And of course I play the Christmas playlist I created on my iPod while I make them (I have more than 400 Christmas songs on it!).

Kassie DePaiva (Blair, “One Life to Live”): Normally I spend Christmas up in the Catskills with my immediate family, and between Christmas and New Year’s, I have cousins who come up from Atlanta with their children, and we just sit by the fire, play in the snow, snow-ski, and just eat, drink and be merry. It’s all a very fun, family time that has become tradition for the past 15 years. Usually there’s a lot of good snow, and there is always a lot of good fun.

Mario Lopez (ex-Christian, “The Bold and the Beautiful”): I spend the holidays with my family. It’s family and friends and a lot of food, a lot of cocktails and a lot of love.

Murray Bartlett (Cyrus, “Guiding Light”): It’s about being with family. I usually spend the holidays with family. Because it’s the middle of the summer in December in Australia, I’ll spend the holidays with family on a beach or something. It’s beautiful where we go — there’s the beach and the ocean, there’s tropical rainforests. Also, I remember back in 2000, I rang in the new millennium on a sand dune with my best friends. We just hung out there and waited for the New Year. That is my perfect kind of holiday.

James Reynolds (Abe, “Days of Our Lives”): Every Christmas when my son was young was a special Christmas. A child’s excitement on Christmas morning goes deeper than just getting things. There is a sense of magic and fantasy in the anticipation of this special day.

John O’Hurley (ex-Jim, “The Young and the Restless”): We are developing a family tradition. We just bought a place up in Vermont in an effort to return to authenticity. We’re now going to be spending our holidays up there; it’ll be our return to an authentic Christmas. It’s going to be spent in Vermont rather than L.A. I think Vermont is such a beautiful state, and the holidays are more special up there.