By Stampeders.com staff

We asked Bo Levi Mitchell, Randy Chevrier, Ben D’Aguilar, Brander Craighead and Deron Mayo their thoughts on everything Christmas! Here’s what they had to say about where they’ll be spending the holidays, their favourite carol and the ugliest Christmas decorations they’ve seen.

Where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?

BO: I will be spending Christmas in Texas with my family. We’re all going to go down. I spent this last off-season in Washington so this season I’ll go down to Texas and my mom and my grandma are coming down and my dad will be there. So we’ll have the entire family out there. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

CHEVY: In Calgary at home with my family.

BEN: Right here in Calgary across the street from McMahon Stadium.

BRANDER: I’ll be spending Christmas at my girlfriend’s house in Winnipeg and then later that day we’ll be at my house in Ottawa and so we’ll be with both families.

DERON: I’m going back to Boston to be with the family. It will probably be snowing down there. And it will be just as cold as it is in Calgary. Well, maybe not as cold but it’ll be winter for sure.

Does your family have any Christmas traditions?

BO: White Elephant. So we all do a really bad gift, it’s a lot of funny gag gifts. And then we give an actual one where everybody has to make the gifts as close to $50 as possible. It’s a fun time. You get to steal presents from other people and stuff and it’s just a good time to have fun with the family.

CHEVY: We started that Elf on the Shelf thing. It’s been two years now and the jury is still out for me. We open gifts on Christmas Day. We go to mass either Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day and just try to make some nice food and have a good time. My wife and I, when we started living together when I started my professional career, we did this thing — when we had no kids it worked — we’d go to the mall on Christmas Eve, we had a $50 budget, we had two hours to run around the mall, find the gift, have it wrapped and then that was our Christmas gift. We haven’t done it the last few years because with kids it’s kind of hard.

BEN: We get Chinese food and chicken wings every Christmas. It’s not very traditional but it’s because everyone in my family is picky. Only my mom and myself like the traditional Christmas meal so they decided to go with Chinese food and chicken wings instead.

BRANDER: Not really. My girlfriend’s family has a bunch of traditions that I’ll be partaking in but my family on Christmas morning, usually we sit around the tree and we hand out gifts to the kids. But other than that, we don’t have a lot of traditions. Although I will be cutting down my own tree.

DERON: Not really. We just put up the tree. We always went out and got a real pine tree instead of putting up a fake one, so that was pretty cool. But other than that, we have a family dinner at night and go to everybody’s house — go to my grandparents’ house and to our family friends’ house.

What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever given?

BO: I helped give the 2014 Grey Cup to the entire city.

CHEVY: Gosh, I don’t know. That’s a tough question to answer. Any time my kids and family have ever gotten anything their eyes usually light up.  Usually my wife and I we get each other an “us” gift.

BEN: A pair of Jordan 8s that I got for a friend last year.

BRANDER: When I got my scholarship to university, I got it over the Christmas break in the mail. I handed that to my parents and it was like, “School is going to be free, guys.” So that was pretty exciting.

DERON: This kind of sounds cliché, but it would have to be my time. Just coming home all the way from Calgary, it’s a pretty expensive flight for me and the wife to fly home and I know the family just loves to see us. They only get to see us a handful of times a year. 

What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?

BO: My first baseball glove. Baseball was my first love and the first one my mom got me was an awesome glove. I kept it for so long even though it broke and tore, I taped it up and did everything I could to keep it. That first time you get something towards your sport that you love you’ll remember it forever.

CHEVY: When I was a kid I remember I had the GI Joe troop transport. I think I’ll always remember that for some reason. It was like the best, the coolest. And as an adult I’ve gotten some amazing things. My family treats me so well.

BEN: Pajama bottoms. Mutant Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms. I was always complaining how cold it was in the house because they turned the heat down to save energy and money and I loved Mutant Ninja Turtles, so they found these pajama bottoms for me and it was awesome. I rocked those for a long time.

BRANDER: It had to be a cell phone when I was a kid. I didn’t think I was going to get one and my parents ended up getting me a pretty cool one, so that was a pretty cool Christmas gift.

DERON: It’s probably a car from my parents and my brother. They paid for a car for me to go to college and I got to drive it back up after I went back to school after my Christmas break. It was a used 2003 Nissan Maxima. Yeah, it was a nice ride.

Who is the hardest person to buy a present for?

BO: My oldest brother Patrick. He’s so much different than everybody else in the fact that he doesn’t want the most expensive thing out there. He wants these different things and he doesn’t just want to come out and tell you what it is so he’s always hard to buy for.

CHEVY: I would say my wife. I always fall back to my usual Lululemons because I know she enjoys wearing those. I always try to look for something different but a lot of times Christmas is about showing how much you know the person and what they need.

BEN: Myself. I already have everything I want so by the time Christmas comes around, it’s maybe a pair of socks or some thermals.

BRANDER: It’s not hard for me to give presents or even to make presents. I’m pretty creative. But getting me gifts is quite difficult.

DERON: Probably my brother Jerod. He’s one of those guys who kind of has everything and really doesn’t have to wait until Christmas to get it. He’s a hard person to buy presents for so I just get stuff for his kids.

Do you use wrapping paper or gift bags?

BO: So, I use a lot of gift bags unless some woman is there to help me wrap because I’m not very good at wrapping.

CHEVY: Wrapping paper and I’m terrible at wrapping gifts. I can never get the tabs on the ends… like I can do one really nice and the other one’s too long. I’m so terrible.

BEN: Neither. I just let the gifts roam free and say, “There’s your gift.”

BRANDER: I use wrapping paper. I actually just picked up some good stuff.

DERON: Wrapping paper, for sure. It’s the tradition. 

Real tree or artificial?

BO: Real. Always real. I can’t stand artificial trees. We go pick it out. Down in Texas there are so many tree farms you can go to and pick it out and bring it home.

CHEVY: Growing up we had a real tree and now we have an artificial. It’s just a little bit easier because we have dogs running around. Since we had the kids we always worried about the pine needles and stuff so we’re still in artificial mode.

BEN: I don’t have a tree. But I do have cat scratching post that’s shaped like a tree and it’s got dangling things like ornaments that the cat plays with. So that’s my tree.

BRANDER: I go out and cut my own tree down every year and I save a piece of every tree on a piece of wood.

DERON: Real tree all the way. I love the pine smell. 

Angel or star on top of your tree?

BO: Star

CHEVY: Star

BEN: A cat.

BRANDER: Star. Well, actually, it depends. It’s usually an angel holding a star.

DERON: Star, for sure. A star with lights on it.

What’s your favourite thing to eat on Christmas?

BO: Probably my favourite thing to eat any time is macaroni and cheese. I know that’s weird, but macaroni and cheese is always my favourite meal especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas too.  Anytime we can make that I’ll eat it.

CHEVY: Oh my goodness, what wouldn’t I eat? I love having turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry, desserts. Christmas is a time when I put on a lot of weight and then I really need to hit the gym in January because I eat it all. 

BRANDER:  It would definitely be turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. That’s always a mainstay and that’s always good.

DERON: Probably my grandmother’s baked macaroni and cheese. She makes the best.

What’s your favourite Christmas song?

BO: Rudolph the red-nose Reindeer, of course!

CHEVY: So the one that everyone always makes fun of me is that Bryan Adams Christmas song, “Something about Christmas Time” because I think I was in third or fourth grade and I was in a choir which was like I did not belong in the choir and I had to sing that song. But every time it comes on the radio I start singing it and I sing so poorly and my wife just laughs but I guess that’s my favourite Christmas song.

BEN: You know that scene in Home Alone when he’s in front of the mirror and they start playing White Christmas? I love that version of the song — da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

BRANDER: I’ll go with Frosty the Snowman.

DERON: I don’t really listen to Christmas carols but wife loves all of them. She listens to Christmas carols starting at Canadian Thanksgiving. It used to be right after American Thanksgiving but now she gets two full months of Christmas carols.

Ugliest Christmas decoration ever invented?

BO: Lights. The people that are lazy and don’t do them right, they’re hanging all off weird and they’re half way to the plug, you know, still lit up and they don’t do it right.

CHEVY: Probably a Saskatchewan Roughriders Christmas ornament of any sort.

BEN: Any CFL-team Christmas decoration . . . except for the Calgary Stampeders ones. Boom!

BRANDER: It would have to be those blow-up things that people put on their lawns. Those just look ridiculous. I’ve never really enjoyed those.

DERON:  The Christmas garden gnomes, for sure. I can’t stand those things. They just sit there and collect stagnant water and mosquitoes.