Nick Jonas knows exactly how to keep his family happy over the holiday season.
The singer and actor surprised fans with a pop-up concert in the Chase Pay Village at the Oculus in New York City Wednesday, where shoppers and anyone passing by got to see him perform his biggest hits. Jonas sat down with PEOPLE beforehand to give fans his best tips for holiday shopping.
“For me, it’s about finding ways to target a need that they might have, like an actual essential thing they might need,” Jonas, 25, said. “I also want something that will make them feel special, so I go for the one-two deal. And I have little nieces and it’s basically all about them [at] the holidays now, so spoiling them is my favorite. It’s the holiday season and everyone is starting to feel a little stress — I know I do — which is why the mobile wallet and Chase Pay makes things a little easier as I get my shopping done.”
Speaking of his nieces, the Jumanji actor said he hopes his older brother Kevin is carrying on his favorite holiday tradition with 3-year-old Alena Rose and 13-month-old Valentina Angelina.
“We used to make the ceremony of setting up the tree a bit of a thing, which I saw my brother do on social media the other day,” Jonas said. “It was the ornaments — my parents had ornaments from their engagement and all their travels. So really significant pieces. But our dad would take a long time to do it, make it a whole ordeal to where we would be worn out by the end.”
Jonas also has double the reason to celebrate this season after being nominated for his first-ever Golden Globe on Monday in the Best Original Song category. The singer wrote the tune “Home” for the animated movie Ferdinand and drew from his own experiences to make it personal.
“I was blown away. It’s hit me at different times throughout this week where I’m just so grateful and blown away,” Jonas said of the nomination. “There’s no words to describe the feeling and the level of gratitude that I feel. There’s no coincidence that I was able to write this song that is so incredibly personal to me and important to me about my family. To have a song recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press and the Globes about them makes it even that much special.”
It also has a side-effect of making Jonas work harder now that he knows the feeling of being nominated for a major award.
“There’s a danger of letting recognition be the reason you do certain things, but also I think it’s an exciting opportunity to get to really have a reference now of what that feeling is and then you can chase it and put your head down and go to work,” he said.
Jumanji hits theaters Dec. 20.
