Megan Hilty and Brian Gallagher Reveal What Christmas Means to Them

November 2nd marks the official start to the holiday season each year for Megan Hilty and husband, Brian Gallagher. We decorate our apartment or our house, depending on where were living, on our anniversary, singer-songwriter Gallagher shares in a recent interview. And with the birth of their first child, Viola, it's clear that just like their family, this personal tradition has only grown.

Now two years old, Viola is beginning to create her own traditions in their family as well. Hilty says Viola loves The Elf on the Shelf and watching Christmas movies. Literally every day this year, we've watched a Christmas movie because she's obsessed with them, specifically the Rankin-Bass [stop motion animated] films.

Gallagher, a solo artist who also tours with Hilty as her guitarist, says Viola helps them appreciate the wonder of the holiday season. Its all cyclical, he observes. When youre a kid, Christmas is everything and then you grow up and it goes away a little bit. But then you have your own kids and it's all exciting again the magic of it comes back.

They will soon welcome a second child, a son, when Hilty gives birth early next year.

Currently, Hilty and Gallagher are on tour promoting their new self-produced holiday album, Hiltys A Merry Little Christmas, which included a run at Joes Pub this week. Theyll finish up in the coming weeks with nights at Feinsteins at the Nikko in San Francisco and the Sorting Room in Beverly Hills.

I've always wanted to do a Christmas album, Hilty says. It was a labor of love. We did it old-school, she adds, noting that they all performed together in the studio to capture a single track. I think that hits you on some subconscious level, Gallagher comments about this approach. It feels like the old records did because that's how they were all recorded. It was really fun and interesting to decorate a recording studio in July to pretend it's Christmas so we could get in the [holiday] spirit.

The album includes ten tracks with classics such as Santa Baby, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and The Christmas Song. Theyre paired with songs less typical for a holiday album like River, A Place Called Home, and Theres Always Tomorrow.

That's a metaphor for Christmas in our family, Hilty shares. It's always finding that balance between tradition and then adding some new things and evolving those traditions.

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Steve Schonberg is the editor-in-chief of www.centerontheaisle.com and the talent ambassador for www.show-score.com . He can be seen regularly on NBCs Weekend Today in New York.