Dolly Parton HONORED to Be Inducted successful Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Don't telephone Dolly Parton the "Queen of Christmas."

While the "Hard Candy Christmas" vocalist has been known to spell each retired during the vacation season, she insists the true title belongs to the one-and-only Mariah Carey.

"I'm not going to vie with Mariah. I emotion her," she told Better Homes & Gardens in the December issue, retired Nov. 11. "You deliberation of Christmas, you deliberation of Mariah. I'm blessed to beryllium 2nd successful enactment to her."

Mariah, of course, released her deed "All I Want for Christmas Is You" successful 1994, which has go a Christmas standard and continues to surge successful popularity each vacation season. While Dolly doesn't privation to instrumentality away from the Glitter star's reign, she admits she's astatine her idiosyncratic and nonrecreational champion during the festive play too.

"The holidays marque maine precise creative, 'cause I'm happy," Dolly said. "And I effort to remember, and I gully from that, from that tone of Christmas—the tone is truly astir giving and tolerance, knowing and acceptance."

Offstage, the 78-year-old continues the holiday cheer with her family, including making her yearly quality arsenic "Granny Claus," complete with her a basement elevator door in her location decorated similar a chimney.

"It's got the flames and everything," she said. "I get successful my Santa suit, and I got my Santa bags with their presents successful it. And I travel down the ‘chimney.'"

Dolly—who has been joined to Carl Thomas Dean since 1966—is also famous for her signature vacation dishes, especially chicken and dumplings, which she said her household "loves."

"Everyone ever wants my recipe," she said. "But I'm not adjacent gonna permission it down erstwhile I'm gone. I privation them to ever say, ‘This doesn't sensation the same. I miss Dolly's.'"