Keeping Up With The Kardashians: Kourtney Kardashian keeps Christmas morning rite from Kylie Jenner

Kourtney Kardashian took the reins of her family’s annual Christmas Eve party on Thursday’s episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

Her sister Kim Kardashian, 39, hosted the event in 2018 but passed on doing it again after her husband Kanye West, 42, decided he no longer wanted ‘the responsibility.’

It was a big job for Kourtney, 41, to tackle, especially as her mother, Kris Jenner, 64, had been the only other person to stage the massive gathering since it was first held 40 years ago.

But Kourtney’s lavishly decorated take on the event stayed true to her low-key style, trading the Kardashians’ typical glitz for an ‘old-fashioned’ evening organized by planner Mindy Weiss.

Guests walked down a rose-lined path to Kourtney’s house, which was decorated in a woody theme with masses of candles, vintage garlands, and a Santa’s Village with the man himself.

Hot chocolate, Käarda-Shian ice cream, and other delicious treats kept the partygoers satiated.

Singer Sia, 44, a family friend, performed at the event, as did the choir from Kanye’s Sunday Services, and everyone spent the night ‘dancing, singing, eating,’ said Khloé Kardashian, 35.

‘I was looking to get an official adult adoption from Kris,’ Sia told the crowd, posing as a Christmas doll in a giant box. ‘But then I realized tonight I can just marry Rob [Kardashian].’

‘The party couldn’t be more special,’ Kourtney reflected afterward, as guests’ own video of the event was shown. ‘It just had so much love and warmth and feeling.’

The eldest Kardashian already endured a family squabble about who was going to host Christmas morning, though everyone finally decided they’d head to hers after Santa visited.

The night after her big party, Kourtney stayed up until 3am planning Christmas brunch, making gift bags, preparing almond eggnog, and putting up gingerbread houses.

Later, she couldn’t help brag about her accomplishments, and said that she knew her Christmas Eve party had also been a hit.

‘Almost every person I saw said that this is the best one yet,’ she told Kris and her sisters.

The season 18 episode titled Family Matters will be the last episode of KUWTK to air until the series returns from its mid-season break in September.

At the beginning of the episode, Kim admitted that she was afraid to tell her mother she didn’t want to host the Christmas Eve party again, especially after Kris handed her the gig in 2018.

‘It’s not just a party, it’s changing of the guards,’ Kris had cried when she gave up the event.

The SKIMS founder decided to break the news to Kris at a screening of the film Like A Boss, held at Kourtney’s home, which was attended by guests such as Billy Porter, 50.

‘You know how people, when they’re dating, they invite them to a public restaurant to break up with them?’ Kim asked her mom. ‘I thought I would do it in a public setting, and tell you so you can’t get mad at me.’

‘Are you breaking up with me?’ Kris wondered.

‘I am breaking up with the Christmas Eve party,’ Kim said. ‘I can’t do it this year.’

Kris was surprised, saying it had been such an ‘honor’ for Kim to have gotten the party in the first place, but also acknowledged that she was too ‘exhausted’ herself to throw it again.

She ended up asking Kourtney to host Christmas Eve, as her home was perfectly set up for a large affair and her daughter loved the holiday so much.

There was one twist: Kylie Jenner, 22, wanted to host the family on Christmas morning, taking over an event that Kourtney had previously always hosted.

‘That’s what I care about, is doing Christmas morning,’ Kourtney said. ‘Kylie’s will be too over-the-top. She’ll have a chef… I don’t want that. If you guys want that, I can do my own thing.’

She explained in a confessional that the family usually came to her house, where the kids would line up and run toward their presents, with the adults getting just as excited.

When the family met to plan Christmas Eve, Kylie informed everyone that if Kourtney was going to host the Christmas morning event, she would do her own thing with daughter Stormi, two.

‘It just doesn’t make sense that Santa only goes to Kourtney’s house,’ the makeup mogul noted. ‘The best part about Christmas morning for me growing up was Santa visits your house.’

Khloé said she wanted to be with family as she was all alone with her daughter True, two, but Kim admitted she was ‘torn on it,’ as her daughter North, six, also asked why Santa didn’t visit them.

In the end they all decided to meet at Kourtney’s after celebrating with their kids at home.

Kourtney then announced that she wanted to forgo ‘outside help’ at party.

‘I think if we could take a day and not be waited on… that’s a ton of what I enjoy about Christmas morning,’ agreed Kendall Jenner, 24, who was holding her new puppy.

‘I want a really cozy, intimate moment with us and the kids,’ Kourtney emphasized. ‘I don’t want servers there. I don’t want housekeepers there. I don’t want chefs there. I don’t want a decorator setting the table. I just want it to be really fun, like how we grew up.’

Kris and Khloé still wanted Kourtney to hire assistants for that morning, but acknowledged privately that she had been open to their suggestions, and called themselves ‘obnoxious.’

Kris had already experienced challenges of her own that month, as her assistant Matthew had gone on vacation and Khloé had to step in to help her get things done.

Khloé gamely visited her mother’s office at Kylie Cosmetics to do menial tasks, putting together PR kits, printing agendas, heating up cold coffee, and taste-testing old candy for freshness.

Kris was unfortunately horrified when Khloé failed to notify her about a surprise visit to the office by Rod Aissa, the executive VP of original programming at E! network.

‘I want you to be aware of what’s going around you,’ Kris chided her afterward. ‘I would like to be aware that the head of the network is in the building, so I can handle myself professionally.’

‘As opposed to being a drunk mess?’ Khloé cracked.

Kris then asked Khloé to pick up her medicine at the drugstore, gas up her car and drop off a package.

‘I’m sending Khloé on a bunch of errands, ’cause she’s just annoying,’ the momager explained.

She later told her daughter that she’d done ‘really great,’ but emphasized that there had been ‘too much chatter’ and too little business with her around.

‘You’re more of a daughter than an assistant, and I just can’t disconnect the two,’ Kris said.

Kourtney’s ex, Scott Disick, 36, was going through a few personal struggles of his own.

As Kim visited him at home, he admitted to her that his kids lately had been asking about his late parents, Bonnie and Jeff Disick, and he’d had a hard time dealing with it.

Bonnie passed away in 2013 after a long illness, while Jeff died of unknown causes in 2014, and Scott found it hard to revisit their memories, as he’d been extremely close to them.

As footage of Scott’s parents attending his bar mitzvah was shown, he called his father’s best friend, Dave Hacker, and asked him to visit the next time he was in California.

Dave, whom Scott called ‘the quintessential fake-uncle,’ eventually visited and shared dinner with Kim, Khloé, Scott, and Scott’s children: Reign, five, Penelope, seven, and Mason, 10.

He told the group Scott was ‘good at everything’ as a kid, and ‘fearless’ like his son Reign.

He and Scott hadn’t seen each other in ‘four or five years,’ and Dave said it was because his presence was ‘another reminder’ for Scott that his parents were gone.

‘It was almost like losing someone in a car accident,’ Dave said of the Disick’s deaths, which had happened within three months of each other. ‘We had no closure. It was hard.’

He helped Scott open huge boxes of family photos that he hadn’t seen in decades.

‘As much as I was dreading looking through some of these old photos, because I thought it was gonna bring up sad memories… the truth is, it’s brought up so many amazing memories, and things that I forgot,’ Scott said in a confessional.

‘I think the more I talk about my parents, the more my kids will remember them, and feel connected to them.’

Keeping Up With The Kardashians will return to E! in September.