In the heart of Nashville’s holiday hum, where the neon glow of Lower Broadway meets the soft twinkle of string lights draped across Belmont University’s Fisher Center, the 16th annual CMA Country Christmas special unfolded like a cherished family album come to life. Airing Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 9/8c on ABC—with a streaming encore on Hulu and Disney+ the following day—the two-hour yuletide extravaganza, co-hosted by Lauren Daigle and Jordan Davis, wove a tapestry of twangy carols, heartfelt harmonies, and star-spangled surprises. Filmed live before an audience of 1,200 festive faithful on October 8, the event transformed the elegant performing arts venue into a winter wonderland of red bows, evergreen garlands, and a massive LED-lit tree that shimmered like a Southern snowfall. Performers from country’s glittering firmament—Lady A, Little Big Town, Parker McCollum, Megan Moroney, and more—delivered doses of seasonal cheer, from Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s brass-blasted medley of “Jingle Bells,” “What Child Is This,” and “Winter Wonderland” to BeBe Winans’ soul-stirring “We Are the Reason.” But amid the medleys and merriment, one performance wrapped the night in a cozy, crackling firelight: Riley Green, the Jacksonville, Alabama, everyman whose gravelly drawl evokes backroad bonfires, took the stage for a stripped-down rendition of his 2024 original “Christmas To Me.” Simple, sincere, and soaked in small-town sentiment, Green’s set wasn’t just a song—it was a time machine, ferrying viewers back to paper-plate feasts, tangled extension cords, and the unadorned joy of holidays past. As fiddles wept and steel guitars sighed in the background, Green’s voice, warm as a wool blanket, reminded a nation that the holidays’ true sparkle often hides in the ordinary, turning a Nashville soundstage into a front-porch reverie that left audiences misty-eyed and humming along.

Riley Green’s “Christmas To Me” isn’t your run-of-the-mill jingle—it’s a heartfelt hymn to the humble rituals that stitch families together, far from the glossy gloss of department-store displays. Released in November 2024 as a standalone single via his Ain’t My Last Rodeo label imprint under BMLG Records, the track clocks in at a breezy 3:15, its acoustic core cradling lyrics that read like a love letter to childhood Christmases in the rural South. “Five-star meal on a paper plate / Tangled lights and a hand-me-down tree / Laughter loud and the stories we tell / That’s Christmas to me,” Green croons in the chorus, his baritone a gentle rumble that rolls like a pickup truck over gravel roads. Penned by Green alongside hitmakers like Ashley Gorley (the wordsmith behind Luke Bryan’s “One Margarita”) and Casey Beathard (co-creator of Dierks Bentley’s “Drunk on a Plane”), the song sidesteps sleigh bells and snowmen for the tactile treasures of tradition: the sizzle of ham in Grandma’s kitchen, the crack of a football spiraling across a frost-kissed yard, the clink of beer bottles toasting absent uncles. It’s Green’s gift to the genre—a counterpoint to the overproduced pop-country confections that flood holiday playlists, opting instead for the raw, relatable poetry of imperfection. “I wanted something that felt like pulling out the old photo albums,” Green shared in a pre-special interview with Whiskey Riff, his Alabama lilt laced with quiet conviction. “Christmas ain’t about perfection—it’s about the mess that makes it magic.” Streaming numbers bear out the ballad’s broad appeal: over 45 million Spotify plays in its first year, a staple on SiriusXM’s The Highway holiday rotation, and a viral TikTok trend where users film their own “paper plate” feasts, hashtagged #ChristmasToMe racking up 200 million views.

The CMA Country Christmas stage, with its backdrop of faux-flocked firs and foreground of velvet-draped risers, was the perfect proscenium for Green’s nostalgic narrative. Emerging under a canopy of warm spotlights that mimicked a living room lamp’s glow, the 37-year-old singer cut a classic figure: sharp black suit jacket over a crisp white shirt, his signature cowboy hat tipped just so, and the “Duckman” strap—emblazoned with his hunting moniker—slung across his well-worn Martin acoustic. No pyrotechnics, no gospel choir swells; just Green center stage, fingers dancing the opening chords with the unhurried ease of a front-porch picker. As the fiddle’s mournful wail joined in—a nod to the song’s Southern string roots—the audience, a mix of CMA insiders in tailored tweed and fans who’d scored tickets through a lottery frenzy, leaned forward like children at a bedtime story. Green’s voice filled the hall, rich and resonant, painting vignettes that hit home: “Handshakes at the door and hugs that last too long / Mama’s fruitcake nobody eats but we all pretend / That’s Christmas to me.” The steel guitar’s slide, subtle and shimmering, evoked the glint of tinsel on a tabletop tree, while a lone pedal steel bent notes like memories folding in on themselves. Halfway through the bridge—”It’s not the gifts under the tree / It’s the ones sittin’ ’round it with me”—Green’s eyes misted, his free hand rising to adjust his hat in that signature gesture of grounded gratitude. The camera, directed by Milton Sneed (the maestro behind CMA’s cinematic close-ups), lingered on his face: laugh lines crinkling, a faint scar from a childhood hunting mishap visible under the lights, his expression a portrait of poignant peace. By the fade-out, with the final chord hanging like woodsmoke in December air, the Fisher Center erupted—not in wild whoops, but in a wave of warm applause, sniffles echoing from the balconies as strangers swapped tissues and smiles.

What made Green’s performance resonate so deeply wasn’t just the song’s simplicity, but the storyteller behind it—a man whose music mirrors the mud-on-your-boots authenticity of his Alabama upbringing. Born Christopher Riley Green in 1988 to a family of educators and outdoorsmen in Jacksonville, a speck of a town 70 miles east of Birmingham, Riley grew up equating country with communion: Friday nights under stadium lights at Jacksonville High, where he quarterbacked the Golden Eagles to state semis; lazy afternoons on his granddad’s farm, strumming a pawn-shop guitar to George Strait tapes; and church suppers where hymns bled into honky-tonk harmonies. Music was never the plan—after a knee injury sidelined his Auburn scholarship dreams, he pivoted to Jacksonville State University, earning a history degree while gigging at local dives like The Maple House, where his covers of Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee” drew rowdy crowds of coeds and cowboys. By 2013, a self-released EP caught the ear of producer Joey Moi (Florida Georgia Line’s architect), leading to his 2018 BMLG debut Different ‘Round Here—a sophomore slump of sorts, but one that spawned the platinum “There Was This Girl,” a cheeky barstool confessional that cracked the Top 5. Green’s rise since has been a steady burn: 2020’s Ain’t My Last Rodeo yielding “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” a tear-jerker tribute to his late Pawpaw that earned a CMA Song of the Year nod; 2023’s Way Out Here blending barroom bangers with balladry; and his 2024 Ella Langley collab “You Look Like You Love Me,” a sultry slow-burn that snagged CMA Single and Song of the Year trophies, cementing his status as country’s conversational king.

“Christmas To Me” fits seamlessly into Green’s oeuvre—a thread in the tartan of his discography that prizes the personal over the polished. Recorded in a single take at Nashville’s Sound Emporium, with Green channeling the chaos of his family’s annual Jacksonville jamboree (think 40 relatives crammed into a double-wide, turkey carved on TV trays), the track arrived unannounced on streaming platforms last November, a stealthy stocking stuffer amid the frenzy of holiday releases. No big-label blitz, no music video fanfare—just a lyric sheet shared on Instagram, Green’s scrawled handwriting inviting fans to “add your own verse.” The response was immediate and intimate: radio adds from iHeartCountry’s holiday wheel, a spot on Amazon Music’s “Country Christmas Classics” playlist, and covers from up-and-comers like Hailey Whitters, who flipped it into a bluegrass hoedown for her SiriusXM set. For Green, the song’s genesis was pure serendipity—a late-night text chain with Gorley during a deer stand vigil, swapping stories of Christmases past over lukewarm coffee. “We were huntin’ memories more than bucks that mornin’,” Green quipped in a post-performance chat with Country Now, his laugh a low rumble. “It’s about those little things—the burnt edges on the biscuits, the uncle who tells the same joke every year—that make the season stick.” In a genre often accused of chasing crossover sheen, Green’s commitment to the commonplace cuts through like a knife through cornbread, his performance at CMA Country Christmas a masterstroke of minimalism that amplified the song’s soul.

The special itself was a festive feast, co-hosted by Daigle’s luminous faith-fueled poise and Davis’s easygoing everyman charm, their banter a bridge between gospel glow and country cool. Daigle, the Louisiana luminary whose “Thank God I Do” topped Christian charts, opened with a Preservation Hall Jazz Band-backed medley that jazzed up yuletide staples, her voice a velvet vesper bell. Davis, the Georgia gentleman behind “Buy Dirt,” teamed with Little Big Town for a rootsy “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” their harmonies hovering like hearth smoke. Lady A’s “Angels (Glory to God)” and “Wouldn’t Be Christmas” brought pop-country polish, their sibling synergy sparkling like spun sugar; Parker McCollum’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” infused the standard with Texas twang, his Telecaster twinkling like Rudolph’s nose; Megan Moroney’s “All I Want for Christmas Is a Cowboy” was a sassy sleigh ride, her Georgia grit galloping through the giggles; Little Big Town’s “If We Make It Through December” tugged at heartstrings with Merle Haggard homage; BeBe Winans’ “We Are the Reason” delivered gospel gravitas; and Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, and Winans’ “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” fused blues fire with spiritual fire. Amid this merry mosaic, Green’s slot—slotted mid-show after Moroney’s romp—served as a palate cleanser, his acoustic austerity a breath of fresh pine in the program’s peppermint parade.

Fan fervor post-airing was a frenzy of feels: #RileyChristmasToMe trended nationwide, clips of his close-up croon racking 12 million views on CMA’s YouTube channel by dawn. “Riley Green brought all the small-town Christmas feels to CMA Country Christmas with ‘Christmas To Me’—hit me right in the mistletoe,” one X user posted, her tweet liked 45k times. TikTok overflowed with recreations—teens in trucker hats filming faux family feasts, captions reading “Paper plates and pure magic ✨.” Whiskey Riff’s recap called it “the antidote to holiday hype—a reminder that the best bows are the ones on the people you love.” Even critics chimed in: American Songwriter deemed it “emotional excavation, capturing childhood’s quiet chaos in chords that comfort,” while Taste of Country praised Green’s “genuine glow, turning a soundstage into a shotgun house.” For Green, wrapping a whirlwind year—marked by his Damn Country Music Tour sellouts, a Vegas residency tease for 2026, and that Langley Grammy whisper—the performance was personal punctuation. “Playin’ that song on that stage? Felt like comin’ home for the holidays,” he reflected in a post-show Instagram Live, hat off, hair tousled. As the credits rolled on CMA Country Christmas, with Daigle and Davis toasting the tree’s glow, Green’s “Christmas To Me” lingered like the last log on the fire—a small-town serenade that proved the holidays’ heart beats loudest in the hush of the familiar.

In a season saturated with spectacle, Riley Green’s CMA Country Christmas moment was a masterclass in modesty, his voice a vessel for the vernacular joys that bind us. From Jacksonville’s frost-nipped fields to Nashville’s neon nights, “Christmas To Me” reminds us: the merriest magic isn’t manufactured—it’s the mess of meals shared, lights labored over, and love that’s lived-in, not lavish. Stream the special, cue up the single, and let Green’s twang transport you home. In country’s cozy canon, this one’s a keeper, wrapped in ribbon and ready to relive.