Nick Carter to Host Virtual Holiday Dinner, Sing-Along for Charity: 'Holidays Are a Healing Time'

Patrick Dwyer Nick Carter

As the season of giving approaches, Nick Carter is offering fans a special way to give back through food, music and holiday spirit.

The Backstreet Boys singer, 41, is hosting a virtual dinner and sing-along on Dec. 16 titled Home 4 the Holidays, which will benefit Cure 4 the Kids Foundation.

"We as a society have gone through so much in the past couple of years together," Carter tells PEOPLE. "And I really have always believed that the holidays are a healing time and a wonderful time. I would love for this to be an example of how we can all come together and heal together and move forward in a positive way, supporting one another, loving one another."

To participate, fans can pay $25 for a night of fun straight from Carter's Las Vegas home, featuring celebrity chef Nyesha Arrington, mixologist Gillian Murphy and TV personality Billy Harris.

Carter says his home — which he shares with wife Lauren, 38, and kids Odin, 5, Saoirse, 2, and Pearl, 7 months — will be decked out in Christmas cheer, and participants will be sent recipes in advance so they can cook along with Carter and Arrington.

courtesy Nick Carter

The "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" singer will also break out an acoustic guitar to sing a few songs, and has plans to bring in a few special friends to join him.

"I know a lot of boy banders," he jokes when pressed on just which special friends might make appearances.

The menu for the night will feature butternut squash and swiss chard empanadas and abuelita chocolate truffles, choices that come after Carter suggested a Latin flair in honor of Lauren's Latina heritage.

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Cure 4 the Kids is near and dear to Carter, who says he first became involved with the organization, which is dedicated to "advancing cures and prevention of childhood diseases," according to its website, several years ago. After touring the facility with co-founder Annette Logan-Parker, Carter, who lost his grandmother to cancer, was struck by what he saw, and as the holidays approached, felt moved to do something

courtesy Nick Carter Lauren, Odin, Nick and Saoirse Carter

"In the past, when the Boys and I would be on the road, whenever we had an opportunity, we would show up to children's hospitals, as far back as we can remember, just to visit the families and the kids," he says. "And we would hear all these stories just of how our music really touched them and them people in trying times. Those stories always touched us… I just wanted to do more for them."

While meaningful to the patients, the event will also be meaningful to Carter, who says it will mark the first time his daughters Saoirse and Pearl ever hear him perform.

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"[Saoirse's] the musically inclined one, she sings all the time," he says. "She's just my little lovely ball of joy. [But] I tried singing to her a couple of times, and she's like, 'No, no, no, stop, stop.' But I think I'm going to be like, 'Sweetheart, I actually have to perform this for this one.' I'm sure she'll love it."

As the family prepares to head into the holiday season, Carter is ready to deck the halls, as his household is big into decorations — "I looked like one of the Griswolds," he jokes of putting up the lights this year — and Christmas movies, with Home Alone, A Christmas Story, A Charlie Brown Christmas and the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman standing out as favorites.

"It's just creating those memories for [the kids]," he says of his holiday traditions. "My wife, she's Latina, and so the morning of [Christmas] they do tamales. It's something that's been passed down from her grandmother… So she cooks for all the kids and it's literally like a five-day event beforehand."

courtesy Nick Carter Nick Carter with kids Odin, Pearl and Saoirse

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He and his Backstreet Boys bandmates AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell were slated to release a holiday album and perform a series of Christmas shows in Las Vegas this season, but announced in September they'd be pushing the plans back due to COVID-related concerns.

Though Carter says the issues that led to the delay were "out of our control," he feels confident that the group will be back on track for next year.

"I know we're still really hard on this holiday record, which is really important to us because we grew up with all these holiday songs and so we wanted it to be the best that it could be," he says.