Riley Green has a lot on his plate right now. The 38-year-old country singer from Jacksonville, Alabama, played quarterback in college at Jacksonville State before music took over his life. These days he’s one of the coaches on Season 30 of NBC’s “The Voice,” so his fall has been spent helping other singers chase their shot.
So when TODAY asked him what he wants for Christmas, you might expect a long list.
He kept it to three words. “Some time off.”
Then he filled in the rest. “If I get to go home and spend some time with the family and have some nice, cool weather days to get out in the woods, I think I’ll be really happy,” he told TODAY, as quoted by Whiskey Riff on Nov 5.
That’s a man who knows what he’s missing. He said family time means more to him now than it used to. “Family being around everybody is something that I’ve always really enjoyed, and now I probably appreciate it more than ever.”
Riley even has his own holiday song. He put out “Christmas To Me” in 2024, and Whiskey Riff ran it right alongside this story, so give it a spin while you read about the Christmases that shaped him.
Riley Green’s own Christmas song, “Christmas To Me”
Now for the gift.
Whiskey Riff says the best present Riley ever got as a boy was a drum set. The writer added a little joke in parentheses, “his poor parents,” and if you’ve ever lived in a house with a drum kit, you already get it. That line is the writer’s, though, not Riley’s.
Riley told the drum story himself in an earlier interview with ABC Audio back in 2025. He admitted the gift that made the most sense would have been something else. “I feel like a guitar should have been like the gift that I got that really worked out,” he said. “But I got a drum set one time and that one I was really excited about.”
So how did his drumming career go?
“It didn’t pan out and I think my parents hated it,” Riley said. “But that was the one that I was the most fired up about.”
There’s something sweet in that. A boy who would grow up to make his living with a guitar spent one very happy Christmas on the drums, and his mom and dad got the full concert.
Christmas morning at the Green house was a crowd, too. “Both sets of grandparents would come over Christmas morning, and we’d kind of stretch it out for a week going to visit everybody,” he told TODAY. He remembers “Going to grandmother’s house and opening presents.”
And then there was the food. “We would do breakfast at my grandmother’s house. She made really good biscuits and gravy.”
Whiskey Riff also mentioned his mom’s breakfast casserole and sweet potato casserole as part of the home cooking he grew up on. You can almost smell that kitchen.
Riley said he hopes to pass some of that on one day. “I think that I would love for my family to be able to experience some of the home-cooked meals that I got growing up and going to those family gatherings.”
For now, he’d settle for a few cool days in the woods. If his parents are smart, they’ll leave the drum sticks out of his stocking.