Jason Gray talks about Christmas Stories: Repeat The Sounding Joy When I decided to do a Christmas record I wondered what it would be like—what kind of Christmas record I could get really excited about? And I thought about a Gray Christmas tradition that involves one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors: “Beyond Words” by Frederick Buechner, a kind of dictionary/encyclopedia of religious words and characters that come to new life under Buechner’s observant eye. Every year I pull the book off the shelf and look up each of the characters who make an appearance in the Christmas story, and every year I’m so moved by the humanity of these people who find themselves unexpectedly caught up in the middle of The Greatest Story Ever Told. So I set out to write and record a collection of Christmas songs based on the individual characters in the story. As I got deeper into the story and the characters, though, I found myself in an intense narrative peopled with characters in the midst of great drama and crisis! The young girl who carries the secret of angels; the heartbroken young man whose fiancé is pregnant with another’s baby (will he forgive her when it’s in his power to ruin her?); the wisemen with their gifts of gold (will they give the child what he desires most, the gift of themselves?); the harried innkeeper so overwhelmed with his work that it’s hard for him to recognize the wonder on his doorstep that would make him whole. Yet there is great joy in the midst of this sober drama, too: the exuberance of the shepherds, wide-eyed and breathless the moment after the angels split the sky with their chorus. They are running into town with Gloria! still ringing in their ears—not entirely sure where they’re going, but what is there to do but run!—to see the newborn King. And of course there is the child himself who will make us children again and heal the world with joy.