What's under Amy Grant's Christmas tree?

There's a new Christmas album, a new television special and a new concert tour that stops

Dec. 13 in Wichita.

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By JIM PATTERSON

The Associated Press

ASHVILLE, Tenn. --- The Christmas season is a welcome constant for Amy Grant.

The Grammy Award-winning singer is the Andy Williams of her generation. Her Christmas-themed music and live shows are as much a part of the holiday season as fruitcake and eggnog.

"I've drawn from a wealth of Christmas at home," said Grant, who was born in Georgia and raised in Nashville. "Sitting in front of a fire, passing a guitar around, decorating the tree."

"A Christmas to Remember" is her third holiday-themed album. Her seventh Christmas tour started Wednesday in Tupelo, Miss., with a lavish show featuring the Nashville Symphony, Michael W. Smith and Point of Grace. The tour will travel to 20 cities, including Wichita for a 7:30 p.m. Dec. 13 concert the Kansas Coliseum. Her CBS-TV special "A Christmas to Remember" will air at 7 p.m. Saturday, with guests Tony Bennett, CeCe Winans and 98 Degrees.

"My Christmas memories growing up, there were no negatives," said a soft-spoken Grant during an interview at her new Nashville home before the start of the tour.

Last year, the Christmas tour bypassed Nashville. The official statement said it was time for Grant "to take a breath" after playing sold-out shows year after year. But Grant now admits there was another concern: Her marriage to musician Gary Chapman, whom she had wed some 16 years earlier, was disintegrating.

She arrived for the interview after a morning walk around her new neighborhood. A bicycle belonging to one of her three children blocked the door into the gated home, and Grant had a workman turn down "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 so she could concentrate.

Grant, 39, is even more beautiful in person than in her photographs and videos. But there is a weariness and sad reserve at the moment that belies her sunny public image. Her wholesome reputation took a hit when she left Chapman, host of "Prime Time Country," which was canceled by The Nashville Network earlier this year.

The couple divorced in June.

Now Grant has acknowledged a relationship with country singer Vince Gill, a longtime friend. She said her friendship with Gill was not the reason for the breakup of her marriage. "All I know to say is, I have been a public couple once. And I don't know how that helped or exacerbated the problems that Gary and I had. What I don't want to be is a public couple again.

"I'm not a couple yet, but I just think that's why I shy away from talking about it."

This isn't the first time Grant has used the Christmas season as a safe harbor. She followed up her million-selling 1982 album "Age to Age" with "A Christmas Album" the following year. After "Heart in Motion" in 1991 --- her most successful album ever --- she recorded "Home for Christmas."

"It was an honest choice, but safe," Grant said. "I just did not want the pressure of having to do another studio record, another pop record. It became a pattern, if two makes a pattern."

Her close identity with Christian music began when she was a teenager. She became part of a growing contemporary Christian subculture in the aftermath of the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s. She signed her first record deal at 15, and her songs struck a chord with other young women.

She became a star when "Age to Age" became the first platinum- selling Christian pop album and won the Grammy for best female gospel performance. Her audience grew until she was too popular for the small Christian music industry to contain. Her first Top 20 crossover hit was "Find a Way" in 1985, which won another Grammy. She scored a No. 1 pop hit in 1991 with "Baby Baby."

A request to do a benefit for the Nashville Symphony in 1993 led to her first Christmas show. The show went well and has expanded in scope ever since.

"Personally, it has been helpful to travel (during the Christmas season)," Grant said. "It was sort of convenient to be able to celebrate Christmas, not in a forced family setting. You know what I mean?"

As she sorts out her private life, the appeal of doing an annual holiday tour is fading.

Her youngest child, Sarah, is 7. "Probably all of her Christmas memories connected with me are coming out on the road and enjoying Christmas music. Do I want that to be her only memory of Christmastime? I don't think so. So, next year might be different," said Grant.

Christmas

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