Mandy Moore Just Shared the Most Relatable Christmas Confession
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Moving is a stressful experience—especially around the holidays. Not only are you tasked with finding the perfect gifts for your loved ones, but now you also have to worry about how much to tip your movers, plus find the perfect place to set up your Christmas tree or menorah in this new space. Mandy Moore can relate to the struggle. Within the past month, the actress, singer-songwriter, and lifelong cat lover moved from a pristine, 1950s mid-century home to a warm Spanish Colonial, both in Los Angeles. The holiday decorating landscape she's been used to for the past six years is no longer there, but while Christmas looks different for her and her family this year, Moore is finding several ways to celebrate in her new home.
"I'm definitely a less is more person," Moore tells House Beautiful. "This year feels a bit more thrown together just because we literally moved two weeks ago, so I'm just happy that I got the Christmas tree up." In this new place, she's embracing more maximalist styles, using more color and pattern, and recognizing that "there's going to be spaghetti hand prints on the wall," as she puts it. "My aesthetic has kind of solidified a little bit more, but also I have given myself the room to stretch out a little bit more." Next year, she expects to better understand the "nooks and crannies of the house," having had a full year to figure out where to put things and whether or not her two boys will want decorations in their rooms.
For now, the only other holiday decorations Moore has in her home besides the tree are stockings—including those for her three cats. "Everybody gets a stocking, so they all get stocking stuffers," she says. Like any true cat owner, Moore knows "the crinkled up wrapping paper and the cardboard box are going to be the best gift you could ever give them."
While the cats, and fellow cat lovers, are taken care of for the holidays, Moore says finding presents for the others in her life isn't so cut-and-dry. "I don't feel confident in my gift giving skills if I'm being honest," she explains. She describes herself as "a big experience person," saying she'd rather give moments that become memories—like going to dinner and a movie or a concert—than physical presents. "I think those are the kinds of things that I want to receive because my love language is time spent together," she explains.
It's this quality time that Moore's family's holiday traditions center around. As her sons get older and become more aware of the Christmas spirit, Moore is bringing back a tradition from her own childhood for her children to enjoy. "I grew up with my parents telling us that their first year being married, they didn't have any food in the house for Christmas Eve, and so they had breakfast for dinner. And that was a tradition that we had throughout our childhood, which sounds silly, but I loved it," she says. "I was telling my husband, I'm like, We have to do that this year. The boys love breakfast already, so it'll be fun to have two breakfasts that day."
As music lovers, Moore and her husband are also excited to add a musical component to the evening. On Christmas Eve, she's hoping to bring in the extended family and friends for a holiday singalong around their black Yamaha baby grand piano. "We brought our piano from our [old] house, and it's a real focal point of the living room," Moore says. "But also there's so many memories around it."
While she loves the warmth and lived-in feel of their new home, and the fact that her youngest won't be learning to walk on terrazzo floors but instead hardwood that "might as well just be the trampoline floor," it's the piano that makes it feel like a home. "So much music has been written on it by myself and my husband, and it'll be the piano, if our kids are interested in learning how to play piano, that they'll learn to play on," she explains. "This piano is just very much a part of our family. And hopefully we'll be playing Christmas songs on it in a week."
As much as Moore already feels at home in their new Spanish Colonial, the fact that her kids and her cats seemingly feel the same is what matters most to her. "I think everyone is thriving," she says. "There's a little bit more nature and opportunities [for the cats] to look at squirrels and birds and trees. And so they're happier, I feel like, than they've ever been." Moore's lifelong love of cats is what inspired her latest venture with Cat Chow to celebrate Purina's 60th anniversary: She contributed the forward to a book called 60 Years, 60 Stories, that highlights the impact cats have on our lives.
The book relates 60 stories of how cats have transformed their owners' lives—and Moore can relate. While her cats have impacted her so much over the years, Moore says it was the "isolation and confusion" of the pandemic that really brought her closest to her furry ones. If you're still looking for the perfect gift for the cat-lover in your life, consider this coffee table book to really pull at their heartstrings.
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