Need a little Christmas? Raleigh’s ‘Badass’ CrossFit star is back on TV’s ‘Big Brother’
For those who could use a little Christmas in the middle of this weird, hot summer, it’s available (at least) two nights a week, live on your television.
Or rather, she is available.
Raleigh’s Christmas Abbott — former professional CrossFit competitor, the first female NASCAR pit crew member, author of two “Badass” books, fitness entrepreneur and “Big Brother” Season 19 finalist — has returned to the CBS reality series for Season 22’s “Big Brother: All-Stars” installment.
The show airs live each Wednesday and Sunday night on CBS. If you’re what some may call a “Big Brother” enthusiast, a subscription to CBS All Access will get you a live stream from the “Big Brother” house so that you can keep tabs on the folks there pretty much all the time.
If all this is foreign to you, let us indoctrinate you into the Christmas Joye Abbott universe. (Note: We refer to her here as Christmas instead of Abbott because contestants on reality shows are typically known by their first names).
Christmas Abbott highlights
▪ In 2004, Christmas, who grew up in Lynchburg, Va., worked as a civilian contractor in Iraq.
▪ Christmas, working to overcome drug and alcohol addiction, started Crossfit training in 2006. She became a professional CrossFit competitor, and opened her own CrossFit gym, CrossFit Invoke, in Raleigh in 2010. (Christmas mentioned in the “All-Star” premiere Wednesday night that she recently sold that gym.)
▪ Christmas became the first woman to work in a NASCAR pit crew in 2012-13.
▪ She has published two books: “The Badass Body Diet” (2015) and “The Badass Life” (2017).
▪ In 2017, Christmas went on Season 19 of “Big Brother,” a CBS reality show in which “house guests” are quarantined together in a house (a series of rooms built on a studio set) wired with cameras and microphones. The house guests compete in a series of games and physical challenges to win rewards that will prolong their stay in the house, but they also form alliances and manipulate fellow competitors to get to the end. (The season’s winner gets $500,000.)
▪ In the second episode of her season, Christmas broke her foot in a freak accident — getting a piggyback ride from Cowboy Jason, who slipped in the grass and fell. She didn’t just break her foot, it shattered.
▪ The broken foot: At the time Christmas described her broken foot this way: “It looked like a bomb went off in my foot.” She had 10 broken bones, four dislocated bones and one ligament that had to be reconstructed. Surgeons had to use a donor bone in one place, and Christmas was told she would not regain full mobility — meaning an end to competitive CrossFit training.
▪ Christmas left the house for emergency surgery and returned to recuperate there. She spent weeks in a cast getting around in a wheelchair, on crutches and later on a knee scooter. She eventually graduated to a boot.
▪ Despite the physical limitations, Christmas made it to the “Big Brother” finale, but was eliminated by her buddy Josh Martinez, who went on to win.
▪ The year after “Big Brother,” Abbott started dating Benjamin Bunn, a Crossfit athlete and gym owner in Tampa, Florida, and a former Army paratrooper. They met at a charity event, Christmas told The News & Observer in a May 2018 interview. Christmas became pregnant and moved to Tampa so that they could raise their baby together.
▪ This is where things go a little sideways for Christmas. We reported in November 2018 that Christmas was arrested in August 2018 after repeatedly ramming her Mercedes SUV into a parked Honda sedan owned by Samantha Jane Morse of Tampa. Christmas, 8 months pregnant at the time, was charged with criminal mischief greater than $1,000, a third-degree felony. Her target, Christmas told police at the scene, had been involved with Bunn. When the responding officer asked Christmas what happened, he said she started crying and told him that she just “lost it” and crashed into the car because the owner of the car was cheating with her child’s father. She told the officer that it “hurt her feelings” that Bunn cheated on her.
▪ Christmas returned to Raleigh to have her baby boy, named Loyal Atticus, born in October. But that wasn’t the end of the drama. TMZ reported that Benjamin Bunn, who has a criminal record that includes a charge of domestic violence, was demanding a DNA test and tried to get custody of the child from Christmas. In May 2019, she plead guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor criminal mischief and was sentenced to 12 months probation and 25 hours of community service. She also had to pay restitution and complete an anger management class.
▪ Christmas and her son live in Raleigh. In Wednesday’s premiere, “Big Brother: All-Stars” showed footage of her playing with him on a trampoline in their backyard.
▪ Christmas has a website (christmasabbott.com) and fitness app that offers workout programs and nutritional guidance. Her website also sells a line of “naturally derived nutritional supplements,” crafted by Christmas and sold under the Bourn Relentless brand.
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 12:08 PM.
