Point of Grace Premieres Must-See Christmas Special
Point of Grace is inviting you and your family to forget (for just a little while) how different, how difficult this year has been, and to join them in celebrating the Christmas season. For A Point of Grace Christmas, the illustrious music group has scaled down their usual concert hall capacity and traded it for an intimate living room gathering with an audience of family and friends.
Despite the smaller venue, the women’s powerhouse vocals still deliver a soul-stirring punch. Not only are classic Christmas anthems and beloved originals like “Not That Far From Bethlehem” and “Immanuel” included in the special, you’ll also be treated to interviews and a look behind-the-scenes with songs and stories from the road. Host and singer/songwriter Andrew Greer leads viewers seamlessly through their stories, as Christian music legends Michael W. Smith and Michael Tait, and author Patsy Claremont lend their talents to the journey.
Point of Grace has been a part of my faith walk for many years now, and I must say – I had a wonderful time watching this special. Andrew introduces them as “Christian music icons…and our good friends.” And that is exactly what it felt like – sitting down with old friends, reminiscing about the past, and celebrating the present. I spoke with Point of Grace member Shelley Breen recently about the Christmas special, and some of her own treasured Christmas memories.
There are comments from so many different people on Facebook about this Christmas special. One of the things I noticed is how eternal the message is in this special. Why do you think it reaches so many different generations?
It doesn't hurt that we've been around for 25 years plus years going on 30 now. I think that our music does reach a lot of generations just based on that. And a lot of our fans now are fans because their moms are about our age, and they kind of grew up through late high school or college listening to us. It's like the one sort of thing that a mom can share with her daughter or a whole family can enjoy because they're all used to hearing the music or it was a tradition for them at Christmas time to put in our Christmas story album.
Someone shared a post on Facebook of your kids singing at concert soundchecks years ago. Family traditions are clearly important to you all.
Yes! My daughter Caroline. Those are some of their most fun memories growing up, them getting to go on the bus with us on Christmas tour. She and Darby, Leigh's daughter, would bring Christmas lights. I mean, we'd make a Hobby Lobby haul before we went. They would decorate their bunks with Christmas lights and put up Christmas stickers and have Christmas pillowcases. I mean the whole nine yards. They're both 18 now and they were texting the other day and saying how sad they were about this year. Even though they're older, there was still one or two shows that they could hop on the bus for like a weekend or something. And this year, because there weren't any shows it was kind of good that we have the Christmas special DVD. Caroline was saying to Darby, we need to just come over. And like, you know, wear our Christmas pajamas and watch our moms on the DVD special to make up for not being on the bus. They love it. They really do.
And this is your first holiday special as a group?
Yes. It's our first DVD holiday special. We've always wanted to do one. Andrew [Greer] has a production company here in town and they're amazing and they're very reasonably priced. We've gotten to know Andrew over the years. He came to us with the idea and we're like, ‘Okay.’ And in typical Andrew fashion, we didn't really understand what all it meant we were going to have to do for him! We tease him all the time. But actually the end product is very – I loved the interview footage, all of the old stuff they put in, they did a great job.
With this special, you all have created this new Christmas tradition for years to come. Were there any traditions that you had to abandon this year that you're just heartbroken about?
You know, other than just the Christmas tour - we've just been so busy. It's just kind of interesting that we had this book, How You Live that just came out late October, and Christmas with Point of Grace DVD special that came out just right on the heels of that. Both of those things came out in a year that we aren't on the road. It's so timely, we could never know this was going to happen when we started it, but it really is timely. It's enabled to us to get creative and do a few other things that we haven't been able to do before. I've never been home during the Christmas season much at all. But it's gone by really fast. I don't feel like I've just been sitting around 24/7 watching Hallmark movies, you know, it's been pretty busy.
Of course my favorite song is “Candy Cane Lane.” How did y’all choose songs?
We knew it was going to be more of an acoustic feel and we knew we weren't gonna use tracks for anything. We wanted it to have a living room feel. As you see, we were actually in a living room and with some of our really good friends that we had come and be an audience, but we just wanted to do songs that we knew we could recreate, that would sound good acoustic with just a few instruments. And so that kind of narrowed it down.
To hear these songs redone for, I'd say the modern age, I think music just kind of brings about memories and things to people that make them feel good, especially around Christmas time.
A Point of Grace Christmas is available to watch FREE on CBN Family, and for purchase wherever music is sold. Check out the trailer below!
