A year after its first Christmas album was released, Christian rock band Third Day has found the time to tour in support Christmas Offerings. This week, Third Day launched The Christmas Offerings Tour, which makes a stop Thursday at Life Changers Church in Hoffman Estates. Joining them on the tour is Jars of Clay. When we put out the album last year, we had done so much touring, because we had done our Wherever You Are album and we did 100 shows touring with that, bassist Tai Anderson said.
It was already enough that we made the album when we had our little break in the summer. We had kind of forgotten about it when Jars of Clay called up and said, Hey, we re working on a Christmas record. Maybe when we re done, we should do a Christmas album this year. If they didn t call us, we probably wouldn t have done it. In October, Jars of Clay released its first Christmas album, Jars of Clay Christmas Songs.
In the spirit of the season, Third Day will give a portion of the proceeds from the tour to Jars of Clay s Blood:Water Mission to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. We re just such fans of what they are doing and what they ve done with the platform they have, Anderson said. People during the Christmas season are naturally inclined to look for opportunities to make the season significant.
In sitting down to make the Christmas Offerings album, the band decided the album should fit in with its series of worship albums. We already have this offerings series that are very worshipful and have the live elements, Anderson said. That kind of set the template for the record. We chose songs that actually talk about Jesus, which is sometimes kind of a unique thing. There s a lot of Christmas songs that don t talk about Jesus.