At Christmas time, country stars have the rare opportunity to park the tour bus and enjoy time with family. The Boot talked to several of your favorite singers about their yearly traditions.

Jimmy Wayne: Each year, I get involved with the Angel Tree Program. It's about giving back. I encourage everybody to find that Angel Tree somewhere and pick an angel off it and sponsor that kid -- at least one. Buy stuff that they need.

Jake Owen: I get to spend a lot of time with my family and go home. It's a really good time. I don't get to go home a lot, so I really enjoy just going home and seeing my twin brother. Plus, it's a time of giving. We don't really give gifts or anything. It's more about spending time with each other and doing things for other people.

Trent Willmon: I hang out with my daughter and her family. We cook, eat, snowboard, and watch the kids open more presents in an hour than I got my whole life!

Chris Young: We always get the family together and go out to look at Christmas lights. And we always put our tree up together.

The six degrees of separation theory gets a little closer when Chip Davis starts talking about the novelty song 'Convoy' and the phenomenon of Mannheim Steamroller. You see, Davis is the man behind both of these very popular musical happenings.

Back in 1975, Davis co-wrote and co-produced the C.W. McCall hit 'Convoy,' which also became a huge hit movie starring Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw and Ernest Borgnine. The Sam Peckinpah-directed film about a mile-long convoy supporting a trucker's vendetta against a not-so-kind sheriff is history, but Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas CD series is now celebrating its 25th anniversary! Steamroller, however, was created in 1975, the same year of 'Convoy,' releasing a series of 'Fresh Aire' compilations.

Married musicians Buddy and Julie Miller are sharing the top spot on the year-end chart of the top albums in the Americana music format. The Americana Music Association reports that tracks from Buddy and Julie's 'Written in Chalk' received more than 8,000 spins at Americana radio in 2009. 'Townes,' Steve Earle's tribute to late singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, was the second-most-played album of the year, followed closely by Slaid Cleaves' 'Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away,' the Flatlanders' 'Hills and Valleys' and 'Willie and the Wheel' from Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel.

Interestingly, Justin Townes Earle, the son of Steve Earle whose middle name came from Townes Van Zandt, also placed an album in the Top 10, with his 'Midnight at the Movies' landing at No. 9 for the year.

Jewel has enjoyed years of success as an artist and reaped the material rewards that go with such success, but around the holidays she never forgets the lessons she learned from her Christmases as a kid when there weren't many presents under the tree.

On her official blog, Jewel writes that the family would often exchange handmade gifts, and says she and husband Ty Murray now do the same. "Almost all of my Christmas trees were empty when I was growing up, and for many years after that. But you know what makes it OK? My dad taught us to make things. We would take what we had around us and make gifts. I remember turning the driftwood into windchimes for my dad, or my brother wrote us a poem."

We all know Shania Twain has perfected the art of the pop-country crossover hit, but now scientists believe they've discovered the dimensions of the most attractive female face in the singer's lovely visage.

BBC News reports that the key to the ideal arrangement of a woman's facial features is the measurement between her eyes, mouth and ears. The study was led by the University of Toronto in the songbird's Canadian homeland, with the findings published in the journal Vision Research.

Students rated the attractiveness of color photographs of the same woman's face, laid out side by side. Using photoshop software, the researchers altered the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth, and the horizontal distance between the eyes in each image, but didn't alter the features themselves (no computer-enhanced nose jobs or collagen injections!)

Many country artists look to their childhood holidays for traditions they want to keep as they begin having families of their own.

Christmas for Carrie Underwood hasn't changed that much since she was a young girl growing up in Checotah, Okla. She still gets together with her family, which includes her parents and two older sisters. "We're not a huge tradition family," explains Carrie. "I hang out with my sisters, my parents and my sister's husbands and kids. We just get together and do our thing. We actually celebrate all of the Christmas activities on Christmas Eve. I don't if a lot of people do that, but we all open presents and stuff like that on Christmas Eve. Santa comes Christmas morning, and we watch football." Carrie can now add a new fiance to the family gatherings, as she and professional hockey player boyfriend, Mike Fisher, got engaged over the weekend.

For Christmas gifts, Brad Paisley usually gets them at the last possible moment, but he says it's just part of his genetic makeup. "I'm pretty last minute. Most guys, I think, are like me. You just don't invest enough, you don't think ahead and plan it," explains Brad. "I really do end up somewhere like the mall or something on the 24th. It's a shame. It's really a waste of what should be a fun day, because here I am scrambling around going, 'Oh, I think they'll like that.' They may have never heard of it, and I don't know what is necessarily, but let's buy it!"

It's a chilly December morning, but Danny Gokey is all warmth and smiles as he enters Starstruck Studios, a state-of-the-art facility that is part of Reba McEntire's Music Row complex. The 'American Idol' alum is putting finishing touches on his 19/RCA Records debut album, and he's excited about embarking on a country music career.

"It's all American music," the Milwaukee native tells The Boot. "There's not a person in the United States of America who doesn't love country or have some kind of tie to it. I personally have a tie to it through growing up as a child -- my father introducing us to Wynonna Judd. I think I was 12 or 13 and I just remember being like, 'Wow!' I loved it. She had this soul that went into it and you just felt the music when it played."