You Make It Feel Like Christmas is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Gwen Stefani. The album, which is Stefani's first full-length Christmas-themed album, was released on October 6, 2017, by Interscope Records. The record was executively produced by Stefani and Busbee, with additional production coming from Eric Valentine. The standard version of You Make It Feel Like Christmas contains twelve songs, featuring six original songs penned by Stefani, Busbee and Justin Tranter, and six cover versions of Christmas standards. While going on a nature walk near the Oklahoma ranch house belonging to boyfriend Blake Shelton, Stefani felt inspired to record a Christmas album and began writing what would later become "Christmas Eve". Recording sessions took place in the summer months of 2017; several of the tracks' titles leaked in August, leaving Stefani to confirm the project in September. The album's original songs make references to Stefani's newfound love and relationship with Shelton.
The album was preceded by the release of lead single "You Make It Feel Like Christmas", a duet with Shelton. It became a modest success on international record charts, becoming Stefani's first entry as a solo artist in years in several territories. A music video for the song was released in 2018. In Italy, Stefani's cover of "Santa Baby" and the original song "Secret Santa" were selected as singles and distributed to mainstream radio stations. Elsewhere, "Santa Baby" was released as a promotional single for the album. To promote You Make It Feel Like Christmas, Stefani performed on numerous television programs, such as Today, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She also filmed an accompanying television special, Gwen Stefani's You Make It Feel Like Christmas, which premiered on NBC on December 12, 2017. A deluxe edition of the album was distributed in October 2018 and features two previously unreleased songs and three new covers, including a duet of "Feliz Navidad" with Chilean singer Mon Laferte. Another reissue occurred in 2020 with two new songs, "Sleigh Ride" and the original single "Here This Christmas".
You Make It Feel Like Christmas garnered a mostly positive reception from music critics. Stefani was praised for creating a classical Christmas record as opposed to a modern one. However, some critics disliked the original songs for not sounding festive. Commercially, the album did not replicate the success of Stefani's three previous albums. It reached number 16 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States and had first week album-equivalent units of 10,000 copies. Elsewhere, the album charted in Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Scotland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. All seventeen songs on the standard and deluxe editions of the record entered Billboards Holiday Digital Song Sales component chart in the United States.
Background
Following the release of her third solo album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, Gwen Stefani announced in July 2017 that she had plans to release new music by the end of the year. During the summer months of 2017, Stefani vacationed at Blake Shelton's Oklahoma farm estate where she spent time doing exercise, meditation, and praying. Inspired by the exotic animals surrounding her while on a spiritual walk outside Shelton's property, she remarked, "If I wrote a Christmas song, what would it be?" After questioning herself, she began singing random lyrics out loud on the spot which she would later use in "Christmas Eve", one of the album's twelve songs. She cited this nature walk as the main source of inspiration for deciding to record a Christmas album and eventually inquiring with Interscope to begin production.
The titles of several tracks, including "Christmas Eve", "Under the Christmas Lights", and "You Make It Feel Like Christmas", first leaked on August 2, 2017, when they appeared as published works on BMI and GEMA, American and German music databases, respectively. Because of the registered song titles, several music critics suggested that Stefani may be recording her first holiday album. On September 18, 2017, the singer took to her social media accounts and claimed that she "had something big planned for the holidays" and would release more information later that week. As promised, following the announcement, she revealed that she had recorded a Christmas album. She also shared the project's title – You Make It Feel Like Christmas – and its track listing. Describing the album, Stefani referred to it as a split collection of classic Christmas songs and newly recorded tracks.