Donna Kelce Shares Her Family’s Thanksgiving Plans and Traditions

The Kelce family will be celebrating Thanksgiving this year without the holiday’s most iconic dish — a turkey.

“We usually just go get a ham,” Donna Kelce exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting her partnership with Ancestry®. “I’m not particularly fond of turkey.”

While Donna, 71, claimed she’s “not a good cooker,” she noted the family’s Thanksgiving menu will feature several delicious baked goods.

“I bake cinnamon rolls. They’re always my favorite, my go-to. I only can do it a couple [of] times a year ’cause they’re so sugary,” she shared. “So, we’ve got rolls, we have muffins, cookies, things like that, and I usually do that in the season.”

Donna and her ex-husband, Ed Kelce, are parents to NFL stars Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce. Jason, 36, shares three daughters — Wyatt, 4, Elliotte, 2, and Bennett, 8 months — with his wife, Kylie Kelce. Travis, 34, began dating Taylor Swift in September, though Donna did not reveal whether the Grammy winner, 33, will take part in the group’s Thanksgiving celebrations.

Outside of food, Donna told Us she and her family often spend their holidays solving puzzles and playing board games. “During Christmas, years ago, we used to [play] Mario Bros. video games,” she recalled. “We would say, ‘OK, it’s your turn. You see how far you can get,’ and then we’d do a tag team.”

The holidays can be a “rough” time of year for many people, and Donna noted that’s especially true “when your kids are in sports,” as her sons are. “You’re not home a lot during the holidays,” she explained. “We would travel a lot. We would be in Florida, St. Augustine, visiting relatives, Disney [World], Marco Island and Fort Myers. [Jason and Travis’] grandparents [and] uncles, were in Florida, so we constantly went to Florida for the holidays.”

Heading into this holiday season, Donna is giving thanks for all the people who helped Jason and Travis achieve their athletic dreams while making sure the brothers stayed down-to-earth.

Related: A Complete Guide to Travis and Jason Kelce’s Family

NFL players Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce made history in 2023 when they became the first brothers to face off against each other at the Super Bowl. When Jason, who is a center for the Philadelphia Eagles, and Travis, who is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, cross paths on the football field, […]

“They had phenomenal coaches, fantastic teachers, great supportive families that were around us because we traveled so much [for] baseball, football — really nice individuals that are still friends to this day, for me,” Donna told Us. “And I think it was a menagerie of all those individuals with all those great qualities that rubbed off on them through all those years, and I’m just very, very happy that they got those opportunities and they turned into the men that they are.”

Keeping her family’s holiday traditions alive is something Donna is excited to do through her new partnership with Ancestry®. “They’ve got the ability to be able to upload photos and recipes and things like that, which really intrigued me, and that’s why I decided to be in partnership with them,” she told Us. “And just even audio stories, too, for future generations. So, that was really important.”

Donna also noted that the service — which uses DNA and records to track down a person’s genealogical history — helped her discover “things in my past that I wanted to know.”

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi