The idea of a family recording a Christmas album, especially across multiple generations, is an enticing one since the season is, like many religious festivals, a communal one.
This delightful idea finds perfectly warm and cosy form in the Estefan Family Christmas, the second Christmas album from the seven-time Grammy Award winning music artist Gloria Estefan – her first was 1993’s Christmas Through Your Eyes – which finds her teaming up with daughter Emily and 10-year-old grandson Sasha, all too aware, she says in an interview with America’s CBS News, that time is of the essence.
“You know, I always wanted a second album but because I’ve done so many albums throughout my career, the timing never worked.
“I started noticing that he was shooting up in height and his voice is starting to change. I thought, ‘God, I would love to capture this moment before he goes over to the dark side,” she said.
“So I asked them to do a Christmas album. The three of us together.”
We should all be glad she decided to bring the family together in common musical pursuit, not only because it reflects their shared tradition of performances at Christmas – “Music, lots of music,” said Gloria / “Usually a little show,” said Emily / “Performed by us, said Sasha (CBS News) – but because is an album that feels like everyone’s Christmases recorded for posterity.
From the moment we hear the opening notes of the first track, “Wonderful Christmastime”, a cover of the Paul McCartney song, which is full of the warmth and celebration of the season, and which segues rather fittingly into “Thankful”, an Estefan original, we know we are listening to a family wholly comfortable with itself and with their festive rituals which bind them together.
If Gloria Estefan was after a snapshot of her family at a critically important point in time, she has it, with Estefan Family Christmas, which includes original and classic tracks recorded in both English and Spanish, feeling like a musical photo album that the family can look back on, no doubt fondly, in years to come.
With Gloria, Emily and Sasha coming together in glorious harmony on just about all the tracks, Estefan Family Christmas feels like a festive hug, the kind that reminds those of us with warm and rich Christmas family traditions how powerful it can be to share the season with those we love.
Songs like “Christmastime is Here” evoke the sense of being cosied up to a roaring fire, with those you adore around you; lyrically and musically that’s always in evidence on this track but Gloria Estefan brings some extra contentment and joy to proceedings with an arrangement that while not a radical departure from the normal feels extra cosier than normal.
The tracks are often separated by sweetly overacted segments where family members act out some small tableau, reflective no doubt of their admitted theatrical festive dynamic, which add a little extra intimacy to an album that already feel emotionally intimate already.
There’s also some playfulness among the earnestly delightful familial togetherness with tracks like I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and The Chipmunk Song added some joyful levity to proceedings.
The second track actually features their dogs and cats, and while it’s once again theatrically enhanced – if you’ve ever tried to get a cat to do anything on cue, you’ll appreciate how the magic of the recording process stood in for their actual pets vocalising – it reinforces that sense of a close family sharing something altogether special.
While Gloria Estefan has also brought a great deal of her Latinx heritage to all her recordings, it carries even more weight in the Estefan Family Christmas because it draws us once again to what defines them as a family and what binds them together so closely.
Having it set down in communal song is no doubt intensely special for the family, but it allows us to share in a Christmas tradition not our own, with songs like “Last Christmas”, “It’s a Marshmallow World”, “Quisiera Yo Ser Santa Claus” and “Doy Gracias Por Ti” embodying their Latinx heritage in ways that also refleect the multicultural wonder of the American experiment.
Listening to Estefan Family Christmas feels like coming home, not simply to the Estefan’s place but to your own kith and kin, a delicious musical reminder that where we can, whether it’s with birth family or a found one, gathering together with those we love the most is what makes Christmas so special, a specialness accented this year by an album that is the living aural embodiment of everything that’s wonderful about shared tradition, family love and being together in music.
Here’s a live performance of one of the tracks from the album …