As the nation heads to another COVID-dictated quarantine, memories from the past year of shutdown loom large … and are captured in a surprisingly personal music video by singer/ songwriter Elizabeth Chan, who the New Yorker famously called “The Queen of Christmas.” The genre’s most prominent Asian-American artist has recorded and released nine holiday albums, but this year’s release, Celebrate Me Home (listen here), proved to be the most difficult. How to document a year of such hardship, sadness and uncertainty into a spirited, Christmas message?
The result is a documentary style video for her first single, also called “Celebrate Me Home,” which Chan has filled with home videos, family photos, Zoom calls with her band and even footage of her giving birth during the pandemic. The song has already charted as one of the most played holiday songs of the Christmas season.
“This was a very difficult music video for me to share,” said Chan said about directing the video. “How many artists have done Christmas music videos while pregnant and giving birth?” 2020 was a year that demanded a greater sense of reflection for the artist, who has written and recorded nine albums. “I’ve always sought to create Christmas music that reflects our modern feelings on the holiday,” she says. “I would be remiss to not share my life experiences, as we all have lived, during the pandemic on such a deeper level.”
“Celebrate Me Home,” is Chan’s re-interpretation of a popular Kenny Loggin’s song about the desire to be with family and friends for the holidays after a year of social distancing. As people face the prospect of more separation through the new year, the song has taken on new relevancy. “Whenever I find myself too all alone, I can make believe I’ve never gone,” the artist sings in smoky vocals. “I never know where I belong, sing me home. Please, celebrate me home.”
“I think the idea of ‘home’ really has taken on a deeper meaning,” Chan says. “People spent a lot of 2020 alone, isolated from their family and friends. They want to go home, wherever that is for them. I wanted to capture that feeling, of being away from your family but never losing that connection and desire to be together. Hopefully, this season, more families will be able to spend Christmas together.”
Chan had plenty of material to inspire her album. As she faced quarantine in the beginning of the year, she was due to record her ninth Christmas album … and due in the literal sense: she was pregnant. Viewers are taken through a year in the life of Chan’s family experiences of celebrating milestones at home, culminating in the birth and introduction of her newborn daughter. Providing an intimate glimpse of her growing family during the pandemic.
“My family had gone through a rollercoaster of emotions while in quarantine as our family was directly affected and lost relatives to COVID,” the artist says. “It wasn’t easy for us to deal with so much loss, but we found it was important to focus on what we had – which was each other.” Chan’s two-year-old daughter Noelle even contributed to the album, writing with her mom the single “Christmas Holiday.” “She has been singing it incessantly in our home during quarantine – like ‘Baby Shark’ for a Christmas year-round household,” Chan says with a smile.
Celebrate Me Home also includes the song “Carry me to Christmas,” a song Chan wrote to her unborn child asking for her support during the worldwide pandemic. Similarly, the song “Never Said Goodbye” also touches on COVID and how many people were unable to see family or friends before they died from the virus.
“I’m really proud of Celebrate Me Home because the message extends beyond the calendar,” says Chan. “We’ve been reminded how precious life and it’s helped us remember what’s most important, year-round. But Christmas will always be the perfect day to celebrate.”
Chan’s never-ending belief in the magic of the holidays has made her into one of Christmas Music’s brightest stars, listened by millions around the globe. Hailed as “America’s most successful, only full-time Christmas-song singer-slash-composer,” by the New Yorker, the artist debuted her first album, Everyday Holidays, in 2011 by launching a Kickstarted campaign that helped fund the recording. Since then, her yearly Christmas albums have become an eagerly awaited part of the holiday season, spawning many Billboard Top 10 singles.
