Lauren Alaina happily spends most of the year on the road, but when it’s the holidays, she celebrates by being home with her family. The newly-engaged star is looking forward to the time with her loved ones this December, and taking a break from her busy career.
“The biggest thing for me is that I always know I get to be home for Christmas,” Alaina tells Everything Nash. “I miss a lot of holidays. I perform at the parades for Thanksgiving, but Christmas is the one I know for sure. I get to see my mom, I get to see my dad, and I get to see my brother and my nieces and nephews.”
Alaina will likely have her fiancé, Cameron Arnold, with her when she spends time in her home state with her loved ones.
“My biggest tradition is going back to Georgia and just being Lau Lau, and a daughter, and celebrating my family and the year that I had,” the singer reveals.
Alaina kicked off the holiday season by performing at the Grand Ole Opry, for Opry Country Christmas on December 1, the perfect way for her to usher in the holidays.
“The Opry’s my favorite place in the whole wide world, and Christmas is my favorite time of year,” Alaina says. “So it marries my two favorite things, just because of the deep-rooted tradition with the Opry and with Christmas and what Christmas means to me, and what the Opry means to me, It means family to me, both of them, and being with family and celebrating life. They bear very well together for me. So I’m very excited and hopefully, I can get some family members to come and be a part of it.
“My family goes to Opryland every year,” she continues. “I take my nephews every year to see the lights. So the Opry has already been a tradition of Christmas for us for the last few years. And now just to perform is the icing on the cake.”
Alaina was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry earlier this year by Trisha Yearwood, who also invited Alaina to become a member. It was a career milestone that Alaina desperately wanted, but wasn’t sure she would ever achieve.
“I don’t even know still how to explain what it means to me,” the American Idol alum says. “My entire life, all I remember is being a little girl and thinking that I’ve gotta make it to the Grand Opry. If I ever get to the Grand Ole Opry, I will have made it. So to not only get there and get to perform, but to be welcomed into the family. It’s just unbelievable. It was my dad’s dream to play at the Grand Ole Opry, so I inherited it from him. And as a daddy’s girl, those are some big shoes to fill.
“It’s meant so much to me, and honestly, I will never, ever, ever achieve anything that means more to me than that, genuinely, ever,” she adds. “It was the best day of my life.”
Alaina is hard at work on a “very country” new album, her first for Big Loud Records. Keep track of music and tour updates at LaurenAlainaOfficial.com.
Read ’10 Country Artists Who Should Be Grand Ole Opry Members’ here.