Little Big Town’s Christmas Favorites Include Elvis and Pajamas

Little Big Town tells us they enjoy a good Christmas movie and great Christmas music as the holiday gets closer.

Three members of the group shared their favorites with us recently. Karen Fairchild told us, "One of our favorite Christmas traditions is gathering around the television to watch holiday movies, and I know for Kimberly, it starts with..." Kimberly says," 'It's a Wonderful Life.' 'It's a Wonderful Life.'" Karen adds, "Ours is holiday movies, and records, like certain records, have to be played in order for Jimi." Jimi Westbrook pipes in, "You have to start out the season right with Elvis, a little Elvis Presley."

Kimberly also told us about a holiday tradition growing up that her family still does today. She said, "My favorite holiday tradition is, it's happened every year that I can remember that I've been alive. We would go over to my grandmother's house and have Christmas over there, and everybody would come home to Mama and Daddy's house. We'd sit down, and Mama hands out everybody a gift, and we act like we don't what it is, but we do 'cause it's always Christmas pajamas." She adds, "So, everybody opens their Christmas pajamas and goes and puts 'em on, and we come back to the living room, and we sit around Daddy, and he reads 'The Christmas Story,' and we tuck ourselves in until Santa comes."

A couple of years ago, Kimberly released a children's book, "A Dolly For Christmas: The True Story of a Family's Christmas Miracle." "A Dolly For Christmas" celebrates the season's themes of hope, love, and family as it explores a family's adoption process. Inspired by Schlapman's struggle to conceive her second child and how she and her family decided to adopt, the book delves into how her first daughter wrote letters to Santa Claus about her desire for a sibling until the family was actually surprised by their new baby girl, Dolly, days before Christmas.

In the story, all Daisy wants for Christmas is a little brother or sister. Her parents have tried everything to make her dream come true, but nothing is working. So Daisy takes matters into her own hands, praying daily and writing a letter to Santa Claus about her only wish. Daisy's parents are touched by her firm belief and grateful for her help, but as they explain, sometimes you have to wait. God will give you the perfect gift when the time is right. In this heartwarming holiday tale, Kimberly shares the true story of Christmas when her family became whole.

Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild is spending her 54th birthday today (9/28) at work as she and her bandmates host tonight's People Choice Country Awards in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry House.

Karen, her husband Jimi Westbrook, and bandmates Kimberly Schlapman and Phillip Sweet have been staples in the Nashville music scene for over twenty years.

As a journalist, I've been interviewing this group since day one, and Little Big Town members are some of the nicest people in Nashville. In 2015, the group struck a chord when they released their Pain Killer album, which had such songs as "Girl Crush" and "Day Drinking" on it. That album won a Grammy for Best Country Album in 2016 and also won the Album of the Year honors in 2015 for both the ACM and the CMA.

I chatted with Karen not long after the album came out. She responded to the praise it was getting. Karen told me about Miranda Lambert, who cited Pain Killer as her favorite album at the time. "For me personally to know that another singer-songwriter entertainer of the year Miranda Lambert would like what we're doing and you know, be listening to it is incredible. We listen to all her records." She added, "She (Miranda) raised the bar. We wanted to up our game too. It's like every time we get back in the studio, we wanna take it to a new place and a better place, and we're super proud of the way Pain Killer turned out."

I spoke to Fairchild again in 2016 when her group released the Taylor Swift penned "Better Man." Karen told me how they presented the song to the public without revealing the superstar behind it. She said, "Taylor is the biggest pop star in the world, but she's a songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee, and she likes to tell a story, and we didn't want you to have any subtext there other than to hear this song."

She continued, "And we did that, and it had the biggest add day in our history with the guys at Universal that we ever had, and so we were like, 'Damn, we were right! This is a good song! You know? Nobody even knows!' So, for all the people that we told little white lies to, we didn't really lie. We said a young girl from Nashville, Tennessee, wrote it."

As we celebrate Karen on her big day, we take a look at some of her group's biggest and best songs.