The Underwood family had one TV, and it lived in the living room. It got “maybe five channels. No cable,” as Carrie Underwood remembers it.
Years before she won “American Idol” in 2005 and started her country music career, Carrie was a little girl in Checotah, Oklahoma, “population 3,500, give or take,” as she described it in an essay for Guideposts magazine.
Her parents raised cattle on a small farm there. Her dad, Stephen, worked in a paper mill and baled hay. Her mom, Carole, taught elementary school. Carrie also has two older sisters, Shanna Means and Stephanie Shelton.
It was a hands-on kind of childhood. Carrie bottle-fed the littlest calves and gave them nicknames. She spent her days catching frogs, tadpoles, turtles and fireflies. Once, when a cow trampled a fence while her dad was away, Carrie, her mom and whichever sister was home rounded up the cows and rigged the fence until he got back.
In the essay, Carrie also passed along a joke from her husband, retired NHL hockey player Mike Fisher, about how flat that Oklahoma countryside is: “You could watch your dog run away for two days straight and still see them.”
Carrie made a short “Christmas Memories” clip for her 2020 holiday album “My Gift,” and it’s a sweet minute to spend with her before we get to the morning she never forgot.
Carrie’s “Christmas Memories” clip for her album “My Gift”
Now, back to that single TV.
One year, Carrie decided it was time for one of her own. “One Christmas, I decided I wanted Santa to bring me a TV. We only had that one in the living room.”
A TV comes in a big box. That’s exactly what she was looking for on Christmas morning.
“One glance at the tree on Christmas morning and my heart sank. No box big enough to be a TV.”
Any parent knows that look on a child’s face. Carrie did her best to be a good sport. She opened her presents one by one, trying to hide how disappointed she was.
Then she got to a tiny one.
“Then I came to a small package, no bigger than a couple candy bars. Guess what was inside? The remote control for my new TV.”
The remote! The TV was hers after all.
Carrie has talked about her family’s Christmas traditions in interviews, too, and this short one with E! is a nice way to hear her talk about the holidays in her own voice.
Carrie talks family Christmas traditions with E!
Christmas in Checotah wasn’t only about what was under the tree, though. The Underwoods sang carols at church. Carrie’s first solo in front of people was at church, when she was six or seven.
Then the family went to the town nursing home. They walked up and down the halls singing for the residents. And they never showed up empty-handed.
“We weren’t allowed to give the folks any sweets, so we put apples, bananas and oranges in little paper bags to hand out. In a small town like Checotah, the Christmas spirit was contagious.”