Christmas this year will be "bittersweet" for Celine Dion. The star is preparing to celebrate her first festive holiday without her husband René Angélil, who passed away from throat cancer in January at the age of 73. "I can't believe it's going to be a year that my husband passed," Celine shared in a new interview with Page Six. "I don't know when Santa Claus is coming, but if I had a wish to make this year, can you just tell him to take his time? I'm not ready."
Celine Dion is preparing for her first Christmas without husband René Angélil
Celine and René, who was also her music manager, were married in 1994 after seven years of dating, and have three children together, René-Charles, 15, and six-year-old twins Eddy and Nelson. "It's kind of a bittersweet moment and at the same time we need to really make the holidays really happy," she added.
The 48-year-old also gave a sense of how she is dealing with the fast-approaching festivities. "I cannot just live on like, 'I lost my husband, my children have no father.' I have to stand tall and strong because this is my way of living: stand tall, be positive, pick your battles, do the best you can and to live for today, not for tomorrow, for today, and know that nothing is perfect, not everything you want will happen."
The star pictured on a recent visit to Disneyland with her three sons
For Christmas, Celine revealed that she and her boys will still be going on the family's traditional ski trip to the Big Sky resort in Montana. "He [René] put something magic into that snow, into those mountains, and every time we go down, I go down with him," she said. "My children go down thinking about him. Every time I take the lift to go up, I feel closer to him."
Celine, who will resume her Las Vegas residency in late January, concluded: "We are healing each day. My kids are doing really well and eventually you have to just to move on. Yesterday is over, tomorrow is not here yet, so today is today."