Home for Christmas truly captures the spirit and meaning of Christmas on several levels, making it an annual favorite. For the second time, Grant has put out a Christmas album that you will find yourself pulling out year after year. Granted, it had been nearly ten years since her previous one, but how many Christmas albums any artist can release in a career. In this case, two were just fine. The production values on her second Christmas creation are considerably better than her first, which is not suprising, given that Amy Grant had become a pop sensation in the intervening decade.
Orchestration replaces the synthesized keyboard bits of the previous effort.
The result is an album that sounds fuller, more professional, and bigger in just about every way possible. With a CD changer, you can play both albums without giving a thought towhich one of the two is better. Indeed, the difference in sound earns them their respective places in a complete Christmas album collection. Furthermore, taken together they practically embody the very essence of your typical Christmas album while also proving to be a benchmark for quality. More songs about Jesus and less about roasting chestnuts would be preferred, but for many listeners this is a moot point.