Updated Dec. 8, 2025, 7:07 p.m. ET
There’s two weeks until Thanksgiving, and Jennifer Garner has already put up her Christmas lights.
The actress − who rose to fame on the 2000s show “Alias” and in films like 2004’s “13 Going on 30” − tells USA TODAY she’s just finished putting up her holiday decorations as she logs onto a Zoom call in mid-November. She goes all-out for the holidays, with her whole family gathering for their an annual Christmas ski trip, too, she says.
The trip involves tons of baking − something Garner says she’s especially up for this year, thanks to her stand mixer from KitchenAid. Garner has partnered with the home appliance brand, and she’s doing some press.
As she joins the Zoom call, she’s also fresh off watching a video that the brand produced, featuring Garner and her mother, Patricia. In the video, the mother-daughter duo make “cowboy” cookies (“Cowboy,” because they’re so large that “cowboys can have them out on the range and have a whole meal out of one cookie,” Garner says in the video). The cookies were a childhood favorite of Garner’s, and the video depicts her making them with her mom in a recreation of Garner’s childhood kitchen.
“I was just blowing my nose before you came on, because I’m so weepy from it,” Garner says on Zoom. “Maybe it’s just because it’s my life, but I think it’s the sweetest. I can’t believe they did it. It’s like they gave me this gift.”
What made the experience even more special, she says, was getting to film it with her mom − someone who, Garner admits, may be actually be more comfortable in front of the camera than she is.
“She’s so funny and salty and sweet that you just can’t help but love her. She is a hundred percent who she is, Pat Garner,” the actress says. “She actually went to New York with me once before to be on the ‘Today’ show, and she got a huge kick out of that. And the ‘Today’ show got a huge kick out of having her on. So she tells me people recognize her in places. They say hi to her, and she loves it.”
Jennifer Garner’s biggest wellness hack? Avoiding sugar.
Garner has a lot on her holiday cooking to-do list. For Christmas dinner each year, she says, she makes beef bourguignon from an Ina Garten recipe in “Barefoot in Paris.” The dish is so popular with her family, she triples it so they can have leftovers.
Also on the menu? A massive, 10-grain bread from “The Bread Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum.
And those dishes only scratch the surface of what she makes throughout the whole holiday season.
“I bake a chocolate bread,” Garner says. “I do bagels. I do homemade English muffins. I do a cinnamon bread. And my niece and nephews and kids really look forward to, ‘What day is tomorrow? Is it bagel day?’ … And then we really do have big, fresh homemade rolls.”
Despite her penchant for holiday sweets, Garner also knows the value of eating healthily. She became a co-founder of the organic kid food company “Once Upon a Farm” out of her passion for providing healthy food options for children.
Garner says she’s always looking for creative ways to cut back on sugar when she cooks for her own family. The actress shares three kids − ages 13, 16 and 20 − with ex-husband Ben Affleck.
“You can have really delicious food without added sugar,” she says. “I’m all for baking treats. I just will either cut the sugar in half or I’ll leave it out, or I’ll make it with something that’s kind of slower to digest. Anything that’s from a whole fruit or vegetable takes longer for your body to digest than just plain, processed sugar.”
It’s something her mom did for her growing up. And it’s something she wants to impart on her family.
“Growing up, my mom made all of our food, and she made our clothes,” says Garner, who was born in Houston and raised in West Virginia. “She was really a prairie girl. But mom always said, if it’s made at home, there’s so much less junk in it that you should just enjoy it. Don’t worry about it too much. And I kind of feel the same way. I tell my kids, ‘I made this fresh. I made it homemade. You enjoy it. You go for it. Don’t ever judge food.'”
How Jennifer Garner finds balance
As far as her own wellness practices, Garner says her physical and mental health go hand-in-hand, though keeping up with exercise can be tough on busy filming days. When she was younger, she says it was easier to power through an early-morning workout before heading to set. Now, she says she often has to weigh what’s more important to her that day: Time at the gym or a full night’s rest.
“I used to work out at 4 in the morning or whatever it took to get my workout in,” Garner says. “I’m 53 now. I need to sleep. And so I won’t get up at 4 for a workout. I’ll get up at 4 if I have to be at work at 4:30, but that is as good as I’m going to get. And I really noticed the difference in my mood and just how my body felt.”
Finding balance is also something she wants her kids to learn, too. In an era with newfound attention to ingredient lists and concerns about what foods are actually healthy, she aims to find the blend of what’s healthy and what’s practical.
“Am I a crunchy mom? I’m a pragmatic mom, so I want my kids to be healthy and feel great, and I want to make great food,” she says. “I want them to hold on to the gratitude for having a full table of healthy options. And really from there, it’s up to them. I am not going to be with them to watch every bite that goes into their mouths. But my mom gave us such a healthy start in life that my sisters and I have naturally done that for ourselves and for our kids. And you just hope that the goodness keeps on rolling.”
