Alan Jackson Reveals ‘Traditional’ Christmas Plans

Alan Jackson doesn’t like to try anything new at the holidays. The country music icon has celebrated Christmas with his wife, Denise, and three daughters, Mattie, Ali and Dani, the same way for the last several years, and sees no need to change those plans.

“Christmas is pretty traditional,” Jackson revealed. “We don’t let anybody open any presents until Christmas morning. We don’t let them get up on their own and take off. Everybody has to wait and kind of get situated, and maybe have a cup of coffee, and then we start all of the regular Christmas morning activities: opening presents, taking pictures and video.”

“We have music going,” added the singer. “I try to keep Christmas music going in the background. I like to turn that on before I let them come down to the tree and everything.”

Jackson’s love of all things traditional extends far beyond Christmas. The 60-year-old also likes traditional country music, and admits he isn’t a fan of where the genre seems to be headed.

“There’s some good music out there,” Jackson told GQ. “But there’s not really much at all that’s real country music anymore on the mainstream country charts — what is nominated for awards — and it’s been going that way for years now, and I don’t know if it’ll ever come back.”

This year’s holiday will be bittersweet for the family, since Mattie tragically lost her husband of less than a year, Ben Selecman, in an accident on a boat dock in September.

“It’s with grateful hearts that Denise and I want to thank our friends and fans for the outpouring of love and prayers during the hospitalization and ultimate passing of our son in law, Ben Selecman,” Jackson shared on social media following Selecman’s passing. “Ben was a southern boy who loved hunting and fishing and just being outdoors. His childlike enthusiasm for each new day was contagious to everyone around him. He was the godly young man that Denise had always prayed for for Mattie. Ben we love you. Rest In Peace until we see you again.”

The couple wed on Oct. 7, 2017, in what Mattie described as a perfect ceremony.

“To say the day was a fairytale is an understatement,” Mattie Southern Bride magazine. “It felt like the first day of school, senior prom, and a sort of graduation into a world with so much more gravity than any we’d yet experienced.”

Jackson just announced several new concert dates for 2019. A list of all of his upcoming shows can be found at AlanJackson.com.

Photo Credit: Getty images/Terry Wyatt