Amy Grant's "Home for Christmas" Turns 29!

This week's Christian music veteran Amy Grant's second Christmas album Home for Christmas turns 29! The album was released on October 6, 1992. Out of Grant's five Christmas albums, Home for Christmas, which sold over three million copies, is Grant's most successful festive album to date. Coming off the heels of Grant's successful 1991 album, Heart in Motion, Home for Christmas performed even better than Heart in Motion on the Billboard charts, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Christian album chart.  

Grant commemorates, "My album #HomeForChristmas came out on this day, 29 years ago. I hope this album has helped you create many holiday memories as it has for me."

One of the album's highlights is "Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)" which Amy Grant wrote with Chris Eaton.This Christmas song tells the nativity story from Mary's perspective. It portrays the mother of Jesus as a frightened young girl, attempting to deal with the circumstances of giving birth to the Holy Father's Son. Despite her human doubts, Mary's faith in the goodness and mercy of God remain and help her deal with the unique situation she finds herself in. 

When Grant first heard it, she decided she wanted to record the tune for her holiday album, but with the verses rewritten to personalize them. She explained in CCM Magazine presents 100 Greatest Songs In Christian Music: "That song is so profound, but the chorus is so simple. It's authentic and perfectly written, because it uses an incredibly moving economy of words. And, selfishly, I just really wanted to be able to use the song on my Christmas record.

So finally Chris said, 'Well, OK, just for this one version, we'll let you put a different lyric on there.' I said, 'Well, you couldn't possibly have written the lyric I'm thinking of, because I'm going to write it from a woman's perspective.' I was very pregnant at the time, and I felt that was part of the inspiration for song as I tried to imagine Mary's experience. We went into the recording studio with Brown Bannister producing and Shane Keister playing the piano and basically got it within one take." 

This Christmas, Grant will be touring with Michael W. Smith. Here are the dates:

- Dec. 1: Charleston, WV
- Dec. 2: Syracuse, NY (tickets on-sale soon)
- Dec. 3: Tysons, VA
- Dec. 4: Lowell, MA
- Dec. 5: Newark, NJ
- Dec. 7: St. Louis, MO
- Dec. 8: Akron, OH
- Dec. 9: Detroit, MI
- Dec. 10: Cincinnati, OH

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