John Wayne Reveals The True Spirit of Christmas!

John Wayne loved his family and America, but he also was a big fan of Christmas too!

His family spoke with Closer magazine to discuss the All American actor’s love of the holidays. His daughter-in-law Gretchen said that Duke did his own Christmas shopping despite being a well loved and known Hollywood star. “He’d go out to Sears and call us and say, ‘Is there something the kids want?’ He bought his granddaughters their first strings of pearls.”

Daughter Marisa said, “He loved Christmas. We had a huge living room, and by the time Christmas came around, you couldn’t walk through it because there were so many gifts under the tree.”

Wayne took extreme care in personally decorating the tree. Marisa also said “You had to do the tinsel one [strand] at a time — you couldn’t just throw tinsel on the tree. And you had to do the snow just right!”

John Wayne also used his fame and talents at Christmas to help shine a spotlight on a serious problem Americans faces, tuberculosis. Remember Christmas Seals that you’d put on your Christmas cards? In the video below, Duke does a PSA and fundraising to help fight this terrible disease.

More information on John Wayne’s love of Christmas is in Closer magazine. Frankly, I am not surprised that he was full of Christmas spirit, but I do very much enjoy the thought of this A list tough Hollywood actor shopping for pearls for his granddaughters at Sears!