How Melissa Joan Hart’s Favourite Christmas Tradition Builds Her Kids’ Anticipation on Christmas Morning

'Tis the season for rewatching your favourite holiday movies, eating too many snowman-shaped sugar cookies, and engageing in all of your favourite holiday traditions, whether they be easy traditions you've been doing since you were a kid or new ones you've started since having your own children. For Melissa Joan Hart, who visited PEOPLE Now to talk about her new holiday movie, Lifetime's A Very Nutty Christmas, it's very much all of the above.

When it comes to holiday traditions, Melissa says, "You name it, we do it." To name a few, her family builds gingerbread houses and always takes a photo with Santa (which she says they've already done a little early this year), and each of her boys has their own Elf on the Shelf who comes every morning of the holiday season as soon as the family's tree goes up. But her favourite tradition of all is one her parents started when she was a kid.

"My favourite one is one that I had when I was little — my parents used to leave us at the top of the stairs and go down to check and make sure the presents were there and that Santa had arrived. Because I think there was one morning when we were really little that Santa hadn't come yet and I think that we had to go back to bed, like, 'Santa hasn't come yet,'" she said, explaining the tradition's kind of hilarious (and relatable) backstory. "So that was a tradition my parents always had and I've carried that on with my children. I can still feel their anticipation when [they're] standing at the top of the stairs, everyone's awake, [and they're like], 'Did I get the thing I wanted? What is it going to look like down there? Is Santa here?!' . . . It's that build up of, like, the moment before you walk through the gates at Disneyland. . . I think the anticipation of anything is always better than the actual event."