Annie Lennox Gets 'Back to Basics' With Christmas and Scottish New Year's Eve

Since her time with the Eurythmics, Annie Lennox has released five solo albums, her most recent being the holiday-inspired 'A Christmas Cornucopia.' That record draws some deeper parallels to her own life than just the regular old artist doing some Christmas tunes -- Lennox was born on Dec. 25, making every holiday season a bit more special for her.

"I just about scraped through," Lennox, who performed at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting, tells Spinner. "I was born about 11:20 at night. My mother had a bit of a tough time that Christmas."

"The question growing up, obviously, was 'did I get two sets of presents?' and yes I did," she continues. "I felt like I was very patient to wait all that time. But now at my age, Christmas just eclipses my birthday."

Though Christmas certainly stands out in Lennox's mind as a special time when she was growing up, the Scottish tradition of Hogmanay -- or Scottish New Year's Eve -- was where the action tended to be. "It was one day a year, where people could be who they wanted to be and then it was back to basics," she says.

A custom during Hogmanay is to bring friends and neighbors symbolic gifts such as coal, whiskey or shortbread, and you can sort of see this old world mentality seep into the video Lennox created for 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.'

Speaking of the songs on 'Cornucopia,' Lennox ignored Santa and reindeer for mature, orchestral arrangements of a host of traditional hymns such as 'Silent Night,' 'The First Noel' and 'O Little Town of Bethlehem.' She also penned a new song called 'Universal Child,' which was released as the first single and marks her first new material since 2007's 'Songs of Mass Destruction.'

"I wasn't planning on writing a song," she recalls. "I was planning on recording these carols, but one day, I had a title that had been going around in my mind, 'Universal Child,' and I was like 'what is that?' During a break, I was playing on a keyboard and all of a sudden, some chords came and a melody. It's like a chicken laying an egg."

'A Christmas Cornucopia' is out now on Decca.