this is our Christmas album

Merry Christmas everyone! And welcome to an album that we’ve talked about making for years: a Switchfoot Christmas album! For each of us in the band, I’m sure this record holds a different meaning. For me, music and Christmas will always go hand in hand. My earliest musical memories are Christmas Music. I can picture it now: my family circled round my grandparents piano, singing carols and playing along as best we could on whatever was laying around- guitars, ukuleles, lap steels, harmonicas, or tambourines. We’d stumble through the Christmas carols smiling and laughing while my grandpa’s Lionel train ran circles round the Christmas tree. Up until last year, I’d never thought of trying to write Christmas songs of our own. The canonized Christmas tunes are enough to tackle in and of themselves. But then last Christmas, I began to see things differently. Christmas is an emotional treasure chest for a songwriter to pull from. It’s a season stretched tight with contradictions: the incarnate God enters the world as a baby born into poverty on the edge of the Empire. This season brings out the best and the worst in us: cutting someone off on the freeway, rushing to get a gift for grandpa before the stores close. Every word is pregnant with meaning, every phrase is tied to years of memories and tradition. These contradictions of elation and disappointments are where we decided to dig to find Christmas tunes of our own. We hope you enjoy our own addition to the Christmas tradition as well as our take on some holiday classics. What a gift this season truly is! Wherever these songs find you, we pray that these tunes can be a welcome addition to your family traditions. God bless you all, and to all a good night, Jon, Tim, Chad, and Jerome