Opening presents, sharing a cup of hot chocolate, and even heating up turkey leftovers are some of the Christmas traditions I am most familiar with. However, country singer-songwriter, Eric Church, has one Christmas tradition that, while purposeful, can get particularly "brutal" due to its emotional nature. What's his family tradition? Sharing heartbreaking stories during Christmas morning. Don't worry, it sounds worse than it actually is.
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"My grandmother, when she was alive, would always come over, and every year she would bring this Christmas story, and some of them were gut-wrenching," Church said, according to Whiskey Riff. "I'm not going to lie to you. They were just heart tugging stories about people who had had ... about a Christmas miracle, who had something happen to them."
According to Church, and Church's grandmother, the point of sharing these stories was to embrace the spirit of the holidays, with that Christmas miracle turning that person's life around. Church would say that his grandmother would spend all year finding these stories she would then share in Christmas.
Continuing The Tradition
While these "gut-wrenching" stories can get emotional, the "How 'Bout You" singer has kept the tradition going. "My mom does that now and she's kind of taken it and she finds the story, and that's something I'm going to do with my family," Church continued. "Katherine and I have talked about it. It'll be her turn to find that, and we have a big Christmas breakfast and we sit around and we share that."
Eric Church sometimes thinks that the stories shared on Christmas morning can get "brutal" and "gut-wrenching," but being able to put things into perspective allows him and his family to feel fortunate for what they have. And for an artist such as Church, reflecting and sharing "gut-wrenching stories" may be a great way to get inspiration.
"If you are down in a gutter / With a homeless shirt tryna shake off the snow / If your tide was low, you lost your rudder / I'd show you where to go," reads Eric Church's first verse of his latest single, "Darkest Hour." A song about helping others, fueled by Hurricane Helene, is surely a way for Church to keep his grandmother's legacy alive, all year long.
