Songfacts®:

• In the vein of "All I Want For Christmas Is You," this song is about what really matters at Christmas. "'The Gift' was one of those thoughts that just popped into my head," Jim Brickman said. "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write a song about how 'the gift' is you. You can give me all kinds of presents that tell me you love me, but the gift I really have in my life is having you."
• Brickman wrote this song with Tom Douglas, whose co-writes include "I Run To You" for Lady Antebellum and "The House That Built Me" for Miranda Lambert.
• Collin Raye and Susan Ashton share vocals on this song. Raye came first to the project, then Brickman pegged Ashton for the female lead after listening to her CD. Most duets are recorded separately, but they were in the studio together, recording their tracks at the same time on a shared microphone.
• Brickman has a lot of success writing Christmas songs that aren't specifically about the holiday. When asked in a Songfacts interview if he considers "The Gift" a Christmas song, he replied: "I consider it a love song that takes place during holiday time. It sent me down this road of writing songs that are set in the holiday rather than about the holiday. When you write about people and relationships instead of about things or inanimate objects or weather or whatever, that's when it starts to connect, because everybody can relate to it.
  
  So, you set the scene, almost like you're writing a book or a play. The winter snow is falling, it's holiday time, and really, when it comes down to it, the gifts that I care about most in life are you. I don't really want stuff."