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"Come December at music megastars Amy Grant and Vince Gill&amp;#039;s house, the mood can get a little frantic. For this multitasking couple, the holidays are a whirlwind of touring, recording, and hosting charity events at a pace that rivals that of Santa&amp;#039;s sleigh on Christmas Eve. The five kids in their blended family come and go; their dogs traipse underfoot. Yes, a fire crackles in the hearth, the tree is trimmed, and It&amp;#039;s a Wonderful Life gets watched and watched again, but other traditions fall by the wayside. &amp;quot;Some years I send out cards, but not every year,&amp;quot; Grant admits. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just like your average bear: sometimes organized, sometimes not.&amp;quot;  Though Christmas in their Nashville home is a far cry from the sedate, well-choreographed affairs of her childhood (which she remembers as all &amp;quot;chafing dishes, fine china, and tablecloths&amp;quot;), Grant, 51, cherishes the season. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the time we all hunker down together at home, best as we can,&amp;quot; she explains.  The holiday is also particularly meaningful for the couple because it played a key part in their meeting. It was Grant&amp;#039;s song &amp;quot;Tennessee Christmas&amp;quot; (which contrasts a homespun country celebration with its glitzy Hollywood counterpart) that brought Grant to Gill&amp;#039;s attention. When he heard it on the radio in 1983, &amp;quot;I said, &amp;#039;Wow, that&amp;#039;s a compelling voice,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Gill, 54. &amp;quot;I noticed it right away.&amp;quot;  For a decade, they met mostly in passing at celebrity charity events; Grant was married to singer Gary Chapman and Gill to Janis Oliver, of the country duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. But in 1993, Gill invited Grant to be on his Christmas special in Tulsa, and their friendship really took root. She then reciprocated with an invitation for him to take part in a benefit for the Nashville Symphony, and holiday shows became a tradition for them over the years. &amp;quot;We more or less met through Christmas music,&amp;quot; Gill says. &amp;quot;I think that&amp;#039;s why it&amp;#039;s such a tender time of year for us, because it&amp;#039;s a big part of why we became friends in the first place.&amp;quot;  Rumors flew that they were more than friends \u2014 which both Grant and Gill repeatedly denied. &amp;quot;From 1993 to 1999, when tongues were wagging, we never did talk about getting together,&amp;quot; he says. Gill is emotional when he discusses this, saying that because of faith and family, the two never dared imagine they would each divorce, let alone end up married.  But they did know they felt a rare and deep connection \u2014 and would until the day they died. In 1997, the Gills divorced; Grant read about it in a newspaper. Two years later, after unsuccessful marriage counseling, she divorced Chapman. The two now-single stars began dating, and in 2000 they wed on a hilltop on Grant&amp;#039;s property.  Predictably, blending the two families wasn&amp;#039;t easy, but they persevered and found moments of real joy. The second Christmas Eve of their marriage, Grant had celebrated earlier that day with her &amp;quot;Chapman children,&amp;quot; as she calls them \u2014 Matt (now 24), Millie (21), and Sarah (19) \u2014 who would be spending the night with their father. Upon returning to a quiet house, she was a little wistful, missing the bustle of years past. She brought in her then 9-month-old daughter with Gill, Corrina (now 10), and discovered that Gill had set a candlelit table for one with a dish of pasta and a glass of red wine. &amp;quot;He just said, &amp;#039;Hand me that baby.&amp;#039; So I sat down and had a very quiet meal. I wound up pulling Corrina&amp;#039;s high chair over there, and it was the first time she ever had pasta. We fell out laughing at her, because she was just so excited about it.&amp;quot; Next:   Though the holidays are usually joyful, the season will be challenging this year as the duo reflect on some tough transitions. Gill lost Will Owsley, a longtime friend who cowrote and played guitar on Gill&amp;#039;s current single, &amp;quot;Threaten Me With Heaven,&amp;quot; and toured with Grant for years. Owsley took his own life last April; Gill sang his own &amp;quot; Go Rest High on That Mountain&amp;quot; at the funeral.  &amp;quot;[Owsley] was a troubled soul, and...you say to yourself, You should have noticed that he needed help, that you could have picked up the phone and just talked,&amp;quot; Gill has said. &amp;quot;I had to convince myself that I did the best that I could and that it wasn&amp;#039;t my fault.&amp;quot;  And Gill&amp;#039;s latest album, Guitar Slinger, is the first he has recorded in 21 years without John Hughey, the steel guitar great who died in 2007. &amp;quot;That was very hard,&amp;quot; Gill admits. &amp;quot;I just didn&amp;#039;t want to make a record without John.&amp;quot; Hughey, 73, was a father figure for Gill, whose own father, Stan, a lawyer and judge, died in 1997.  But it was Grant who had the most difficult loss to endure: Just after Easter, her mother and role model, 80-year-old Gloria Dean Napier Grant, passed away.  &amp;quot;My mom was always learning,&amp;quot; Grant says, &amp;quot;and she taught me so much: respect for myself and other people, a love of language and vocabulary, and a love for the Bible and God. And,&amp;quot; she adds, with a slight smile, &amp;quot;she taught me the importance of a slip.&amp;quot; (Apparently a good 20 years ago, Grant invited her mom to a rehearsal for an upcoming tour. Grant&amp;#039;s costume was a sheer white dress with a white bodysuit under it. Her mother told her, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t do that to yourself,&amp;quot; pointing out the value of always leaving a little mystery. Grant heeded her advice.) Gloria Grant spent her last three weeks in the Gills&amp;#039; home, where Grant and her sisters cared for her. The week before she died, Gloria stopped speaking, but one day she gave Grant a precious final message. &amp;quot;My mother took my hand,&amp;quot; Grant recalls, &amp;quot;and moved it onto her heart and squeezed it three times, as if to say, &amp;#039;I love you.&amp;#039;?&amp;quot;  Two nights before Gloria died, her daughters all met in her room with wine and snacks for a girls&amp;#039; night in. Because they knew that Gloria could still hear them, they each came with a list of 10 memories and told her some of the ways they would remember her. The morning she passed away, Grant and two of her sisters gathered around her bed and sang her favorite hymns. &amp;quot;It was really beautiful,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I could not have scripted it any more wonderfully.&amp;quot; Grant wasn&amp;#039;t able to lean on her father, Burton Grant, M.D. \u2014 a retired radiation oncologist \u2014 during this time because he suffers from profound dementia. Her husband has stepped up to be her rock. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s been a difficult stretch for Amy,&amp;quot; says Gill. &amp;quot;I try to do sweet stuff for her to take her mind off things and just to see her smile. She loves camping, so I bought her a little 17-foot Airstream [trailer]. She freaked out when she got that.&amp;quot;  Certainly gifts and happy memories of her mother may comfort Grant, but Gill says &amp;quot;she still has some stuff to get through. She had a big cry the other night, just thinking about her mom.&amp;quot;  And there have been other changes that Grant has been weathering. Daughter Sarah left for college late last summer; as Grant would put it, the last of her &amp;quot;Chapman children&amp;quot; has departed the nest. Though Corrina is still home, Sarah&amp;#039;s departure had Grant feeling sad, so Gill planned a little treat for her.  &amp;quot;The day she came back from taking Sarah to school in New York,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;I was doing the [Grand Ole] Opry, and Will Hoge, a really neat singer/songwriter, was giving his first-ever performance there. He has a song called &amp;#039;Baby Girl.&amp;#039; Amy was always really drawn to that song. She would do video collages of the girls as they were going off to school, and she&amp;#039;d always put that song in there. So she came to the Opry, and I said to Will, &amp;#039;Would you do me a favor and sing this song for Amy?&amp;#039; As she was listening at the side of the stage, Amy called Sarah and held the phone up so Sarah could hear it, too. It was a pretty great moment.&amp;quot;  Next:   The couple is committed to having more meaningful moments in the season ahead. As the holidays approach, Grant is determined to honor her mother&amp;#039;s memory. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll be a Christmas without her,&amp;quot; she admits, &amp;quot;and in another way she&amp;#039;s completely present, but just unseen. Her death was so galvanizing for our family; perhaps it&amp;#039;s really a gift.&amp;quot; Grant will continue the cherished traditions her mother passed on to her, such as the gratitude circle the family holds at Thanksgiving and Christmas: &amp;quot;We all get in a circle and go around and say something we&amp;#039;re most thankful for. Of course, the high school kids will say something goofy, like &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll just be glad when this circle is over.&amp;#039; But we&amp;#039;ve had a kindergartner say, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m grateful for the troops who are serving us when they&amp;#039;re away from their families.&amp;#039; Out of the mouths of babes, right? And then it&amp;#039;s always ended with my dad saying a prayer.&amp;quot; Because of Dr. Grant&amp;#039;s illness, Gill has assumed that role over the last couple of holidays.  Giving back is also embedded in the family&amp;#039;s traditions. Gill and Grant are known as one of music&amp;#039;s most charitable couples. Grant hosts the &amp;quot;Lighting of the Green&amp;quot; at Nashville&amp;#039;s Lipscomb University, a free holiday concert complete with hot cocoa for all and a moving sing-along version of &amp;quot;Silent Night&amp;quot; to close the show. Gill, one of Nashville&amp;#039;s greatest philanthropists, hosts the Vinny Pro-Celebrity golf tournament every year, bringing the game to young and disadvantaged players. He also supports programs for physically challenged war veterans, cancer research, and other causes. Though some of this charitable work involves gala events, the couple have also found a simple way to give back in their own home, and it revolves around a basic basket. Before the season really kicks in, Grant fills a basket with Christmas cards for Holiday Mail for Heroes (redcross.org/holidaymail), which delivers cards of appreciation to servicepeople. Grant encourages her kids and friends who visit to share their sentiments. &amp;quot;The cards have to be postmarked by early December, because they&amp;#039;re sent around the world. It&amp;#039;s really wonderful,&amp;quot; she says. Next:   The basket has become a constant, but the couple otherwise try to stay flexible over the holidays. &amp;quot;We have traditions,&amp;quot; Grant says, &amp;quot;but they change every year. Children grow up, so now we&amp;#039;re just a bunch of adults enjoying one another&amp;#039;s company. Christmas is a kind of journey. You can have ideas, and you can plan for it, but it kind of takes on a life of its own.&amp;quot; Music always plays a part. Since they are usually &amp;quot;all sung out,&amp;quot; as Grant puts it, from their &amp;quot;Twelve Days of Christmas&amp;quot; tour, she fills their home with music from her favorite holiday albums \u2014 ones by Barbra Streisand, Harry Connick Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah McLachlan, plus the Vince Guaraldi Trio&amp;#039;s Charlie Brown Christmas \u2014 until Gill calls out, &amp;quot;Please, Amy, no more Christmas music!&amp;quot; Despite her husband&amp;#039;s entreaties, there&amp;#039;s one time the holiday tunes are always playing nonstop: when Grant is trimming the tree. &amp;quot;I love doing it. I usually put on Nat King Cole&amp;#039;s Christmas album, then get on the ladder and start putting up the lights.&amp;quot; Her favorite trimmings are the old ones from her childhood, including paper angels and engraved silver ornaments that her parents gave her.  &amp;quot;Some nice memories,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And I have several of the beautiful, old-fashioned handblown glass ornaments. We just slowly load the tree up over a couple of days. There&amp;#039;s no rush, except a lot of times our dogs will decide to use the tree stand as a water bowl, so we really have to do some extra watering.&amp;quot; Grant enjoys Christmas shopping while she and Gill tour, but her husband \u2014 well, not so much. When asked how he shops for gifts, Gill says, &amp;quot;Oh, I bought a BeDazzler. I&amp;#039;ll take a vest and do it up.&amp;quot; Then he laughs. &amp;quot;No, I&amp;#039;m a true guy. Christmas Eve, I&amp;#039;m at Walmart trying to finish up. Procrastinator, big-time. Sometimes it&amp;#039;s cash and gift cards from me. But Amy&amp;#039;s really great at thinking through the big gift that Santa&amp;#039;s going to leave. And she&amp;#039;s a big stocking stuffer. She loves for each of the kids to have a stocking crammed full of silly stuff and really nice stuff. You never know what&amp;#039;s in there.&amp;quot;  Grant has fond memories of holiday treats, like peppermint popcorn balls (made with crushed peppermint sticks) prepared according to an old family recipe. She&amp;#039;ll sometimes bake her grandmother Zell Grant&amp;#039;s irresistible brown sugar \u2014 pecan cookies (see recipe). Next:   Corrina adds some wonder to the festivities as she anticipates Santa&amp;#039;s arrival. &amp;quot;I believe she&amp;#039;ll give Santa credit for all good things that happen at Christmastime until she&amp;#039;s 25,&amp;quot; her mother says, &amp;quot;because she loves the mystery and magic of giving. When she was younger, I felt like I needed to ease her into reality. Now she clearly understands reality and chooses to make the mystery fun for all of us.&amp;quot;  Corrina knows Kris Kringle is real, she told her father, because &amp;quot;Santa&amp;#039;s kissed me!&amp;quot; And she has proof: a snapshot of herself asleep in her bed, with the big man himself bussing her on the cheek. Gill actually set up this photo op, with his white-bearded friend Harry Bickel, a bluegrass musician, playing the leading role.  Each Christmas Eve, just before Corrina goes to bed, she and her father leave some cookies and milk for Mr. Claus. &amp;quot;Then I&amp;#039;ve got to go drink the milk and eat the cookies,&amp;quot; the weight-conscious Gill says with a smile. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so much fun to still have a little bit of that sizzle about Christmas from a kid&amp;#039;s perspective.&amp;quot; Grant and Corrina have their own rituals, especially with the mischievous elves who come down from the attic each winter.  &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re just little stuffed elves, but they move around,&amp;quot; Grant explains. &amp;quot;Obviously, it&amp;#039;s me doing it, but it&amp;#039;s fun. If I go on the road, Corrina will say, &amp;#039;Well, the elves aren&amp;#039;t having much activity here at the house,&amp;#039; &amp;quot; she laughs. &amp;quot;If I have time, I&amp;#039;ll hang Christmas balls from a light fixture, and then I&amp;#039;ll stick an elf up there somewhere like he&amp;#039;s riding a horse. Sometimes I&amp;#039;ll go, &amp;#039;Oh my gosh, she&amp;#039;s waking up and I&amp;#039;ve forgotten!&amp;#039; And I&amp;#039;ll go in a room with an elf and throw all of the pillows off the furniture onto the floor.&amp;quot; While the elves are just a &amp;quot;mommy and me&amp;quot; pursuit, the whole family has fun together a night or two before Christmas, when they get together for Dirty Santa. Also known as a Yankee Swap, this is a gift exchange with a sense of humor, and Gill revels in it.  &amp;quot;You draw numbers and take turns picking gifts. What you pick is your gift, but somebody who comes after you can take it,&amp;quot; he explains. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s really funny to see somebody say, &amp;#039;I really like that; I&amp;#039;m stealing it.&amp;#039; And more often than not, I get stuck with a pretty silly gift. One year, I got a talking scale, something I really wanted,&amp;quot; he says with a laugh.  Come Christmas morning, the blended family gathers. Grant&amp;#039;s older children are &amp;quot;great at managing time with both families,&amp;quot; she says, as is Gill&amp;#039;s older daughter, musician Jenny Gill, 29, who got married last year. After opening presents, Gill cooks a big country breakfast of eggs and sausage, &amp;quot;and then everybody goes to their respective corners and admires their haul,&amp;quot; he says.  Sometimes the kids are even lured out of those corners. Grant loves any kind of handicraft, and last year she bought old-fashioned pot holder makers (frames and stretchy fabric loops) for all the girls. As she and Jenny were engrossed in theirs on Christmas afternoon, Grant texted Millie, upstairs in her room, to see what she was doing. &amp;quot;She texted back, &amp;#039;Oh, just on my bed making a pot holder.&amp;#039; So we all came back down by the fire. I thought, &amp;#039;We look like Little House on the Prairie.&amp;#039; But it was just nice to do, methodical and creative, and we were all in the room together.&amp;quot; Next:   Much as Grant loves getting swept up in pot holders and popcorn balls, she&amp;#039;s also mindful of what the season really means. &amp;quot;Faith is salted and peppered through everything at Christmas,&amp;quot; she quietly explains. &amp;quot;And I love at least one night by the Christmas tree to sing and feel the quiet holiness of that time that&amp;#039;s set apart to celebrate love, friendship, and God&amp;#039;s gift of the Christ child. With all the ways we have Americanized the holiday that make it so much fun, it&amp;#039;s just as much a part of it to celebrate peace on earth and goodwill toward men,&amp;quot; Grant says. &amp;quot;I always think about the very first thing the angels said when they appeared to the shepherds: &amp;#039;Fear not.&amp;#039; What an amazing thing that is! How much of life is affected by fear, and how many times does fear crowd in? Those words just make you take a deep breath right there.&amp;quot;  Echoing that sentiment in his low-key way, Gill says that the best moment of the season is looking back on all that he and Grant enjoy and share with those around them. &amp;quot;At the end of the day,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;there&amp;#039;s never been an instance where I didn&amp;#039;t get a bigger blessing by giving. It makes you feel better about yourself. And then it&amp;#039;s just about being grateful. And that&amp;#039;s an awful good thing to feel.&amp;quot; Get the recipe for Grandmother Zell&amp;#039;s Brown Sugar Pecan Crisps "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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