Country Stars Deck the Halls

It's the most wonderful time of the year -- a time when the tour buses stay parked for a few weeks and singers get to be home with their families. The Boot caught up with some of your favorite country stars to find out how they're spending the holidays, along with some of their favorite Christmas memories -- from the traditional to the pretty bizarre.

Keith Urban: "Most of my memories of Christmas in Australia were loading up the station wagon and going to the beach, which sounds like a strange thing to do, unless you live in Florida, maybe. But that's what we did. The four of us -- my brother and me, and Mum and Dad -- would all go to the beach, and there would be families everywhere. We'd take a lunch with us, and a lot of times, we'd take presents with us and open them up either on the beach or in the backseat of the car ... usually in the car because we couldn't wait 'til we got to the beach! That's most of my fond memories of Christmas."

LeAnn Rimes: "I've always been the kid who got up at 5:30 AM, no matter what. I'm up, the coffee's ready to go, let's open presents now! I've always been that way. I love Christmas! The kids are going to get annoyed with me, to be honest. They're gonna be like, 'Can we sleep? It's 4:00 AM!'"

Alan Jackson: "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 -- everybody has to wait and get situated, maybe have a cup of coffee, and then we start all of the regular Christmas morning activities: opening presents, taking pictures and video. 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."

Eric Church: "There's not a lot of firsts in your life -– first child and first Christmas with him (newborn son, Boone) is certainly not something I'm going to miss. We're gonna be in North Carolina with my family. I just look forward to relaxing and enjoying our first Christmas at home and can't wait, and same time, I can't wait to dial it back up next year. We're gonna take him on the road, so it'll be his first tour. So, it's gonna be a lot of firsts over the next year, and we're just soaking it in and enjoying every one."

Gretchen Wilson: "One of the weird things we do is I bring my grandma and grandpa to the dinner table ... They're no longer with us; they're in urns. But they still have Christmas dinner with us."

Chris Young: "We always make sure every year that we put up the Christmas tree together. My family always does that. Doing all that stuff is really exciting every year. Then we always go and look at lights together."

Lady Antebellum's Dave Haywood: "My favorite Christmas gift was probably my very first guitar from my Grandpa about 15 years ago. And more recently, I got a red Gibson about 5 or 6 years ago. That red one we use on stage was given to me by my Dad for Christmas years ago."

Joanna Smith: "We have a gag-gift that we pass around, never knowing who's gonna end up with it. It's the Veg-O-Matic. It's been going around since before I was born, and it's still hilarious when somebody opens it!"

Tanya Tucker: When I was a kid, we would open a gift on Christmas Eve and Santa Claus would come Christmas morning, and that's the way it's been for my kids ... Now we have a house in Malibu, and then I have an apartment here in Nashville. I do my business here. I go to Malibu to relax. We're probably going to spend [Christmas] either here or Malibu. I'm not quite sure yet, but we plan to go to the Virgin Islands in January, so that's our Christmas gift. We're going sailing down in the British Virgin Islands with our good friends. We're going to hang out where the weather is warm."

Frankie Ballard: "I have two sisters. When we were little, every Christmas Eve we would open one present after having a big dinner. Every year it was always pajamas and a book. When you're little and it's Christmas Eve, you get these pajamas and you go put them on. They were always Christmas pajamas. You wear them and then you wake up and you open presents. It made sense when you were little. We're all grown now and are adults, but for some reason, I don't know if my mom is sentimental and she's trying to hold onto the past, but she still every Christmas gives us pajamas and a book. We are forced now to put them on! They're like reindeer and candy cane pajamas. [laughs] It's like, 'Oh ... Merry Christmas!' [laughs] The kids now buy my mom and dad pajamas and a book now, too."

Eric Paslay: "I remember always [on] Christmas Eve, we'd go to my Mom's mother's house, my grandmother, and we'd open up gifts from the family. And my great-aunt lived across the street, so all of those cousins, we'd go over there and hang out and steal some more cookies, show what you got and play with the toy for five minutes and move on to the other cousin's toys."

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