Carrie Underwood released her first-ever Christmas album, My Gift, earlier this fall. My Gift, which debuted at No. 1, features a combination of beloved traditional favorites celebrating the spiritual nature of the holiday, as well as several new originals. Two of the original songs are written by Underwood, frequent collaborator Brett James (“Jesus, Take the Wheel,” “Something In The Water”), and her Cry Pretty co-producer, David Garcia.  In addition to a very special appearance by Underwood’s 5-year-old son, Isaiah Fisher, on the holiday classic that inspired the album title, “Little Drummer Boy,” My Gift also features her first collaboration with Emmy, GRAMMY®, Oscar, and Tony Award-winner John Legend, on the original track, “Hallelujah,” written by Legend and Toby Gad (“All of Me”).

GRAMMY® Award-winning producer, mixer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Greg Wells produced and arranged the album.  He has written and produced some of the best-selling and highest charting tracks of the past 15 years for such artists as Adele, Celine Dion, Keith Urban, and P!nk, as well as the worldwide smash The Greatest Showman soundtrack.  My Gift features a world-class orchestra, led by the pre-eminent arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell, whose many credits include iconic recordings by artists including Linda Ronstadt, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Josh Groban, and his son Beck. My Gift is mixed by 14-time GRAMMY® Award winning mixer, Serban Ghenea.

Carrie says some of her Christmas traditions include a lot of traveling to visit her family and her husband Mike Fisher’s family…but also cooking and celebrating the season. “My perfect Christmas, generally we do a lot of traveling around Christmas. We’ll go see either my family or my husband’s family,” says Carrie. “I’ll spend all day cooking. I’ll make a small turkey, even though I don’t eat turkey. I’ll make myself some tofurkey; cranberry sauce, of course. Of course, sweet potato casserole. You have to have that. That’s one of my favorites because it’s a side dish and dessert, but I’ll just make a ridiculous amount of food. Just celebrate, have a fire, we wait for Santa and open our presents, then we’re off to see the next group of family. It’s all about watching it through my sons’ eyes and just getting to spend time with family.”

She continues: “For me growing up, Christmas was always just comforting. We always had the same stockings and the same tree and the same decorations, and we would always decorate the weekend right after Thanksgiving. You know, flip the Christmas switch, put the tree up. Now that we’re adults and have kids, we can go to the Christmas tree farm and we can walk around, and we can pick out which one and ask Isaiah, ‘Which one do you think?’ Just things like that, making those memories. It’s just a joyful time of year.”

One of her favorite memories from childhood was singing Christmas carols for folks in nursing homes. “Christmas was always just about family,” she says. “One thing that we always did growing up that was one of my favorite memories, we would on Christmas Eve we would go to my grandparents’ house. Us kids were always responsible for putting oranges and apples and bananas in little paper bags and we would go down to the nursing home and sing Christmas carols.”