Songfacts®:

• Piano composer Jim Brickman teamed up with John Ondrasik (who performs as Five for Fighting) to write and record this song, which honors the military personell who are away from home during the holidays. They started writing it in Spring 2017 with the intention of writing a Christmas song on a topic that hasn't been covered. After kicking around a bunch of ideas, they realized there was no song specifically aimed at military families during Christmastime, so they wrote one. The song was recorded over the summer at Ondrasik's studio with John on vocals and Jim on piano.
• Brickman calls this "a thank you to all of our men and women at home and abroad who are serving our country. It's a message that wherever they may be fighting for our freedom, we're thinking of them and that it is still Christmas where they are."
• The music video is comprised of photos can videos sent in by members of the military and their families after Brickman posted a request on his website. The footage is an intimate look at what many troops are dealing with, and how they cope with the holidays away from home.
• In a Songfacts interview with Jim Brickman, he talked about writing this song with Ondrasik: "When you co-write there's always a dynamic between two people - the way that they connect. For example, John and I complement each other but we're very much alike in the sense that on the outside we have trouble expressing our emotions but on the inside, when we write a song, they just come pouring out. His songs, if you really listen to them, are very much like that and so are mine.
  
  So, when we sat down, this started with an idea that wasn't the troops idea. It started as an anthem/hymn type of thing based on church music or on very simple American themes, and it grew from there to where we started thinking about, where are the deepest emotions felt? Well, they're felt by people who are away from each other during the holidays. That's a time when everybody's talking about togetherness and family and friendship, and the ones that are the farthest away, literally, are the men and women who serve in the military. That's how we started down that road."