Christmas Memories from Your Favorite Artists!

Your favorite artists love the holidays just as much as you do! They share some of their most cherished memories here…

“I have so many memories from Christmas growing up!  My grandmother would make amazing apple turnovers around the season and get the family together to come eat them. I vividly remember always making it a point to get out my favorite Christmas vinyls with my family and listen (for enjoyment and inspiration). We would listen to the classics like Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Patty Loveless and Kenny & Dolly. There’s something about vinyls at Christmas that brings a true nostalgic, warm feeling. This is the main reason I wanted to make a vinyl of my own album of Christmas Is Here.”

-Brandon Heath

“One of my favorite Christmas memories was when I was in the fourth grade and we were living on the Oregon coast. I remember we didn’t have much money and we didn’t know if Christmas was even going to happen. But somehow on Christmas morning my mom and dad surprised my sister and me with presents. It’s not even the presents that stand out to me, but just the fact that we were together as a family. That was all that mattered.  

-Ryan Stevenson

My parents are both musical, and both of my brothers have musical bones. Every year, after the narrators finished retelling the Christmas story according to Luke by candlelight at our church’s Christmas Eve service, the Greer Family Ringers would don our handbell gloves, resume position behind the padded black table, and begin to sound out classic Christmas carols to the high heavens on those brassy bells. Even now, the songs of the season continue to play a significant role in the development of the Christmas story in my heart.”

-Andrew Greer

“My mom is number 5 of 7. So, I have 36 cousins on her side. Yea, 36 FIRST cousins!! I absolutely love it and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Holidays are my favorite because we all get together. Christmases usually were spent at my grandmother’s house, but a couple years ago we outgrew that little house. One of my favorite memories was the Christmas we decided we had move Christmas to my Aunt Debbi’s house. So we all went over to my grandmom’s Christmas Eve and had breakfast for dinner, wore PJs, and played games: card games, Scrabble, Monopoly. I just remember feeling so loved looking around that house thinking of all the wonderful memories made there.”

-Lauryn Taylor, 1 Girl Nation

My favorite Christmas tradition and memory go very much hand-in-hand. While I my favorite all time Christmas movie is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, in our home growing up, we always kept the tv in TBS for their 24-hour marathon of The Christmas Story! We loved it. Mom and dad still do it to this day. One Christmas, after opening some gifts, dad mentioned seeing one last gift behind our sofa. Could it be? It was! It was my very own “Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.” JUST LIKE THE MOVIE! That was a fantastic memory!

-Wes Willis, Rush of Fools

“My hope for my latest Christmas record, A December to Remember”, is that it becomes what so many classic Christmas albums are to me – the music that accompanies the memories and moments that surround my favorite holiday!”

-Dave Barnes

When I think of favorite Christmas memories, I immediately go back to my childhood: a warm home and family traditions of food, fun, faith and festivities with friends! Music always filled the house as my mom prepared for the church Christmas cantata she was leading, tempered with Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant and obscure music that only the Shusts loved. I try to create that same warmth for my family of 5 today and we kick the season off the day after Thanksgiving by driving to a Christmas Tree farm and briskly walking through the field to find the perfect tree.  We cut it down and drag it back while we warm up by drinking hot chocolate as the needles get shaken out. Saturday, we decorate it, order a pizza and watch Polar Express together. It’s always exciting and comforting to look forward to fun traditions! 

-Aaron Shust

I was in college at Texas A&M this particular Christmas season.  My new bride and I heard about this lecture happening on campus one night.  They called it the “Star of Bethlehem Presentation.”  For over an hour we sat with a thousand other folks in a dimly lit lecture hall and listened to this man unpack research about what the phenomenon of the Bethlehem Star of the Nativity story actually was.  Our jaws were dropped and our hearts stirred at the thought of how intentional, how plotted, how lovingly detailed our God was in the sending of His Son.  We couldn’t help but stare at the stars that whole Christmas season and marvel at His rescue plan that He set in motion before the foundation of the world.  Almost every year we watch the presentation with friends or family and worship. – Jimmy Needham