Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney & More Share Favorite Holiday Memories
There’s nothing like the holidays to bring families together and reflect on years past. With country stars taking some time away from the road and heading home, many reflected on their favorite holiday memories.
See what they had to say…
“One year I tried to figure out — it was about fifth or sixth grade, I think I was startin’ to…oh no, it was third or fourth grade — I was startin’ to get the hint that maybe there wasn’t a Santa Claus…which there is, by the way. But I wanted to prove it once and for all, so I stuck a tape recorder, pressed record, stuck it behind the Christmas tree, and left it on hoping that I would hear whoever was gonna place those presents there…and I forgot to plug it in.” – Brad Paisley
“One thing you learn in my family is that my mother is…um…a blabbermouth. And ever since I was little, I have known every single Christmas present I have ever gotten, ever. I’m not one for surprises, and yeah, I’ve always known my presents before Christmas. But I didn’t have to, like, sneak around and find out what they were, ’cause Mom told me.” – Carrie Underwood
“My parents pretty much just knew to wake up at six in the mornin’, five in the morning, like as soon as the sun comes up, ’cause that was the rule. My parents told me, they were like, ‘Okay, now you know you can’t come down and open presents until the sun comes up.’ As soon as I saw pretend light through my window, I was downstairs, and I was goin’, ‘Can we…I wanna go open stuff!’ And of course, then my parents did the whole thing of ’Okay, wait, we’ve got to videotape you.’ So they would make us wait, and we would start getting all of our presents into piles for us to open. So, it was definitely…we were just like every other kid at Christmas — me and my sister both. We went nuts.” – Chris Young
“My whole life growing up, we would have a huge Christmas celebration. ‘Cause my family’s huge, and we would spend Christmas Eve at my Granny and Paw-Paw’s house, and then we would go home, and it was the only night out of the whole year that we were actually okay with leaving and going home because we knew that Santa was coming. And then we’d have a huge Christmas breakfast at my mom’s.” – Sara Evans
“My mom, I gave her such a hard time when I was a little girl, because she went to some store and got these snowmen with an icicle hanging down from the bottom, so I thought they were so gawdy. But you know what? Now that I’m older, I love ‘em. And if they’re not on the tree, I’m like, ‘Mama, where are they? Where are the snowmen icicle lights this year?’” – Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum
“My mom actually sent me some of our old ornaments that we had made and stuff. We always had the cheesiest tree, but I miss it. It was always so very colorful. And with my wife, she’s very stylish and chic, and so she wanted this really chic tree, and I said, ‘Baby, I’m sorry. We’ve got to put a little color in this.’ So, I put some of my cheesy little stuff on there, and I think that’s part of Christmas. I think you have to have that, so she relented.” – Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum
“Being half Latin, we celebrate Christmas Eve. So I didn’t really have that ‘Christmas Day wake up excited.’ We always celebrated on Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day we, you know, have with your immediate family, go see a movie or hang out. Me and my dad would go ride horses or whatever. So, no, I don’t. (laughs) My presents are already open!” (laughs) – Leah Turner
“My daughter, Molly, was born on Christmas Eve, which was just truly amazing. We were gettin’ ready to go to Louisiana, and the baby was due about three weeks later. She called me up and said, ‘I’m in labor!’ I said, ‘Well, what are you gonna do?’ She said, ‘Well, I’m gonna go home and get my suitcase packed and stuff like that.’ I go, ‘Awesome!’ You know? Because I was downtown, and the one thing I cared most about was drivin’ to the hospital. I mean, I’d waited my whole life to go as fast as I wanted, and if the cop pulls me over, I can go, ‘We’re havin’ a baby!!!!’ You know? That’s…(laughs)…so I did not want to miss that. So I flew home, you know, and, of course, she had, you know, another 10 hours, but I still drove, you know, 130 the whole way.” – Kix Brooks
“I think one time I held the star, you know, and did it behind them. You know, I didn’t…never did show my face. I was holding the star going through the night. That’s all I did. I remember doing that one year. But all my other buddies was Joseph and Mary and all that stuff. I never did, really, get out on stage that much. Never really did sing in the Christmas play and…no, I was pretty scared to get up there then!” (laughs) – Kenny Chesney
“It’s weird, it’s sort of like, I burn these videos, these Christmas videos, so I don’t have to be humiliated by them anymore, but they somehow reappear the next year. I don’t know how, maybe my parents just make copies, it never dawned on me.” – Jerrod Niemann
“Where I grew up in Florida, we didn’t have snowy white Christmases like you hear about. You know, it’s kind of weird. You grow up, and Christmas is always portrayed as this cold and snow-white (singing) ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,’ all that stuff, and it’s like, I never got that. I never saw that growin’ up. I had palm trees, and it was always 72 or 75 degrees and sunny on Christmas Day where we were from, and you didn’t get to wear the Christmas sweaters and stuff like that. It was like, we didn’t have that.” – Jake Owen
“I remember being four or five years old and playing Mary and holding baby Jesus in our church Christmas play.” – Lucy Hale
“I grew up on a farm. It was a Christmas tree farm though, so that’s why I’m sort of obsessed with Christmas. Yah, I really love Christmas, I wish it was all year round, just like for the feeling that everybody has. Everybody’s buying gifts for each other and there’s sort of a feeling about it. But I think that the fact that I love it so much is probably because I grew up on a Christmas tree farm.” – Taylor Swift
“Every Christmas my family has this thing called ‘exchanging gifts’ where we draw each other’s names and we would have to give gifts to them. So, we’d all get together at my Grandma’s house, and there’s food and just lights everywhere and we’d give each other gifts, and that’s one of the traditions that happened every year. It’s really fun.” – Danielle Bradbery
“Christmas is pretty traditional. We don’t let anybody open any presents until Christmas morning, after Santa Claus comes. We don’t let them get up on their own and take off, you know, everybody has to wait and kind of get situated, and maybe have a cup of coffee, and then we start all of the regular Christmas morning activities, opening presents, taking pictures and video. We have music going, you know, I try to keep Christmas music going in the background. I like to turn that on before I let them come down to the tree and everything.” – Alan Jackson
“It was always very, very simple. My grandparents lived right across the street from us. I would get up in the morning, and I’d look out the window and you’d see a car there, and you’d get in the shower and come back and see a couple more cars there and it was kind of that anticipation of seeing all the family members start to come into town in the morning. And then we always got to kind of roll over there last, and it was like once we showed up, that was kind of the go-time! The food’s out, you eat, and so after we ate and after we opened gifts, it was kind of a race to see who could catch my dad sneak back across the street to take a nap, because he was always the first one to start dozing off on the couch.” – David Nail
“I grew up in Arizona, so we didn’t have like a white winter kind of deal. It’s kinda…once you experience that, it’s hard to go back and like celebrate Christmas in the desert but…for us, we would…me and my family and a couple other families would go out to the desert and bring a big turkey and just kinda have a cookout in the middle of the desert…and drink beers and ride four-wheelers and…well, I wouldn’t drink beers, but they would. We’d ride four-wheelers and horses and just kind of spend it out in the middle of the desert, which was kind of a cool way to spend Christmas. So whenever I think of Christmas, I always think of the desert, which is a little weird, but that’s just the way we did it out in Arizona.” – Dierks Bentley
“I have great memories of getting up early and going and jumping on your parents’ bed and getting them up. You know, and then of course you tear open the presents and then it’s done and it’s like eight in the morning, and you’ve got all morning now to sort of wish you had more presents to open. We had great Christmases growing up. I really, really enjoyed them. Mostly, we’d go to the beach, you know, ’cause there it’s summertime. Load up the station wagon and head off to the beach.” – Keith Urban
“About three Christmases ago, I went fishing with my dad for the last time. We all went fishing together during the holidays. Growing up as a kid, he was always taking us flats fishing up the Gulf Coast, and we all went one last time when we knew it was coming to an end. It was just one of those days – never in my life, so many times we had gone, we didn’t catch anything. I mean, it was every single cast for seven hours, we catch a fish. It was the wildest thing ever where I didn’t know it was possible to catch that many fish. It was the most amazing painted sunset when we were driving in that I’ve ever seen in my life. We just stopped the boat and we all just stared at it for a while, and you just knew, we would kind into that moment for that day. That was kind of given to us, and you knew that was going to be probably the last time that we got to take a fishing trip with him. It was special, man. I’ll never forget that.” – Kip Moore
What’s your favorite holiday memory?
