After Losing Her Dad at 16, Savannah Guthrie’s Christmases Have a Special Meaning

Christmas is a time of joy and reflection. For Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, she looks back on the amazing memories of her dad, who sadly passed away when the NBC personality was 16. He always made the yuletide season so special for her and her family growing up — and the holiday itself holds even more significance: Christmas was also her father’s birthday.

“He had a lot of Christmas traditions in his family,” she said of her dad Charles. “It was really important to him to make Christmas special for us.” One of those traditions was a religious practice.

“My father would always gather us around and we would read the Christmas story in the Bible and we always really loved that, because I think it connected us to the holiday in a really spiritual and significant way,” she revealed during the TODAY All Day streaming special, Holidays in my House.

She added: “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.”

Other traditions he left for her to cherish and pass down were not spiritually centered.

“My dad would always pretend like there was no way we could open any of our Christmas 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 from 2020. “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!’” she said. “That was just a really sweet tradition we had with my dad.”

Now, she ensures she does similar traditions with her own two children. More than anything, the holiday is even more special to her because of her father’s legacy.