Josh Turner Remembers His Favorite Christmas Memories Growing Up in SC

Audio By Carbonatix

As we previously told you, Josh Turner released his first-ever Christmas album this year, "King Size Manger." With the release of his album, he's reflecting on the Christmases he spent while growing up in South Carolina, and especially the great times he had with his family on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.

Turner remembers, "Christmas Eve night we would go to my daddy’s parent’s house and daddy was one of six children. So once that family got big, we couldn’t do everything in the house. So we ended up in my grandparent’s garage. And so, we literally like… we would have a mountain of presents in the middle of the garage and there would be a circle, like folding chairs all the way around the edge of the garage. And so there would be one person designated every year to hand out the presents and so whoever that person was, would hand out one present at a time and everybody was focused on that person opening their presents.. Every time somebody would like actually open up their present everybody could see it, the whole crowd, the whole family of… I don’t know however many there were 40 or 50 of us, you know… they would all in unison go, 'WOOOooo!'”

He went on to say that after presents were open, there was a fireworks competition they'd watch. Then they'd go home and get to open one present on Christmas Eve. "Then we would get up next morning, do our Christmas at home," Turner shares, "And then we would go to my mom’s parent’s house and eat. And then we would do presents there with that side of the family. And then we usually end up at home the rest of the day playing with what we got for Christmas. So it was that way, every year.”

• Turner also shared his family's new Christmas traditions, now that he has children. "When we started having children, we felt strongly about spending Christmas Day here at home because we wanted them to have Christmas memories of being at home and so that’s kind of turned into watching our list of Christmas movies. We have to try to fit them all in before Christmas comes and then we usually try to go out and see lights whether it’s at the Opryland Hotel or, you know, driving through a drive thru light place, Beyond that, it’s just we try to spend as much time with family as we can. We try to spend time at home. We try to have a big, nice fancy Christmas meal and then we’ll always open one present on Christmas Eve night and then we get up on Christmas morning and open all our presents. And then we eat a big breakfast and just kind of you know, spend the rest of the day just chillin’ Nothing too outlandish.”

Source: Josh Turner