Somebody wrote to Priscilla Presley last year with a question a lot of fans have always wondered about. Priscilla was Elvis’s wife through the 1960s and into the 70s, and she lived at Graceland, his big home in Memphis, so if anyone would know the answer, it’s her. The question was simple. Did Elvis like Halloween? What did the two of you do on that night?
Her reply was short. Parade reported it last October, right around Halloween.
“Elvis wasn’t really into Halloween.”
That’s the whole thing. Five words. For a man who gave the world so much spectacle, the spookiest night of the year just wasn’t his thing.
So which holiday did light him up? There was one, and the people who look after Graceland still talk about it.
It was Christmas. Angie Marchese, who runs the archives at Graceland as its VP of Archives and Exhibits, told Parade that Christmas was Elvis’s favorite time of the year. He started early too. The decorations went up in late November, and he left them hanging all the way through his birthday in January.
Here’s the part Priscilla remembers best. She told a TV interviewer back in 2023 how the two of them put up the tree in the dining room, and it’s a scene you won’t forget.
“Yes, that was his special time. He loved all the decorations. I would do the tree, I would put all the lightbulbs on the tree and the lights, and he would take the tinfoil and stand in the back where the dining room table is and curl it all up, squish it together and throw it. And I go, ‘No, that’s not how you put tinsel on’ and so I would take it and put a little bit and he would just take it and throw the tinsel on.”
So Priscilla did it the careful way, a little at a time. Elvis balled the tinsel up in his hands and tossed it at the tree from across the room. She’d correct him. He’d keep throwing anyway. Anybody who’s ever trimmed a tree with family knows how that goes.
Graceland films that dining room tree going up every holiday season, so you can see the very spot where Elvis stood and let the tinsel fly.
The Graceland dining room Christmas tree being decorated
Now here’s the detail that gets fans every single time. Marchese says the tinsel on that dining room tree today isn’t a copy or a fresh box from the store.
“The tinsel that we put on that tree every year is the original tinsel from when Elvis decorated it.”
The same tinsel he once squished into little balls and threw. Still going up on that tree, every December.
If you’ve never seen the whole house wrapped up for the season, this is the time of year he waited for all year long.
A look inside Graceland decorated for Christmas
So Halloween came and went without much fuss in the Presley house. Christmas was the one he couldn’t wait for. And all these years later, a few strands of his tinsel are still hanging right where he threw them.