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Dan + Shay: Great Christmas Moments Then and Now

This is a big Christmas for Dan + Shay as the duo released a double Christmas album in October called It’s Officially Christmas: The Double Album. The project has 21…

Dan and Shay perform on stage. Dan is playing a guitar wearing a green suit and Shay is wearing a red suit.
Daye Kotinsky/Getty Images

This is a big Christmas for Dan + Shay as the duo released a double Christmas album in October called It’s Officially Christmas: The Double Album. The project has 21 holiday songs on it.

Dan Smyers recently shared with us his favorite part about Christmas. He said, "It’s just great hanging out with my family, and seeing everybody…seeing all the cousins, and opening gifts, and just a bunch of laughter, we do that every year, and it never gets old."

Shay Mooney told us what one of his most memorable Christmas gifts was. Shay said, "The one thing I remember wanting as a kid for Christmas was a Nintendo 64. That was the ultimate gaming experience, and I remember on Christmas morning, all the gifts had been opened, and it was the only thing I asked for, and I was so bummed because I didn’t see it."

He continued, "Then my mom was like, ‘Oh, wait, I got one more,’ she was like, ‘You can go grab it, it’s just a little something’. So, I walked into the bedroom, and there it was, in all its glory, the Nintendo 64. It was the best moment of my life up to this point (laugh)."

The duo joined the Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Hudson, Little Big Town, RAYE, the Radio City Rockettes, and many more for an iconic New York City holiday tradition. They performed on the Christmas in Rockefeller Center special, which aired live on December 4th on NBC.

Kelly Clarkson returned to host and perform during the two-hour Holiday Special.

We talked with Dan + Shay recently, and they shared some of their holiday favorites. Dan told us, "My favorite Christmas song, I might scare a couple of people away because it’s not a traditional Christmas song…but it’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ by Mariah Carey."

He added, "That song is awesome, every time you put it on at a party and all your friends are drinking eggnog…’All I Want For Christmas Is You’…every guy does their best to get up and hit those high falsetto notes, and that song is just the jam. Every time, even if you play it in July, if you play it in September, that’s the best Christmas song I can remember, and it gets people fired up and in the spirit every single time you hear it."

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.