A woman longs for her guy to receive Christ as his savior. She dreams of a Christmas Eve when his heart has changed. However, she eventually gives up, praying that the Lord would change his heart someday. A crisis comes into his life and he turns his heart to Jesus Christ. The woman celebrates that his heart has changed This Christmas Eve.
While Peter was mopping up our production of Smiling, I began to consider our next song. It was the late spring of 2023 and I calculated that our next song could be completed in time for Christmas. I thought of Christmas songs that I enjoyed and Wham's Last Christmas came to mind. I decided that our song would be forward looking about "this coming Christmas". I wanted the song to be a song of hope that Jesus Christ would change the heart of a guy who was loved by the female character in the song.
I said goodbye to my 97-year-old mother on June 16, 2023 and returned to Massachusetts the following day. Mom would pass away a few days later and I would return to Pennsylvania to officiate at her memorial service and the graveside service. On my return to Massachusetts on June 17, 2023, I was thinking about the lyrics for This Christmas. I was traveling on Rt. 84 north of Hartford, CT when the chorus of the song came to me. I presented the lyrics to Peter a week or so later and we began work on the song. However, due to my increasingly busy schedule with the radio show and with Gramazin, progress slowed down on This Christmas Eve.
I attended a conference in the spring of 2024 sponsored by Salem Media in Boston shortly after I signed a contract to host my radio show. A cheerful young lady named Britt Harden came up to me and introduced herself. She shared her testimony on my radio show. A short time later she introduced me to her friend in North Carolina, Amarya Danaé. Amarya also shared her testimony on my show under the name Amarya Rogers.
In the course of our conversation I learned that Amarya was an aspiring singer. I listened to other songs that she wrote and sang and I was impressed. As they say, the rest is history. I am so pleased that Amarya is the first singer of a Mercurio-Wagner song. We look forward to collaborating with her again in the future.
Amarya Rogers, 23, is a youth leader, a praise and worship leader, and a Christian music artist from Greensboro, North Carolina. She is a partner with Gramazin, and her passion is to glorify the Lord through song. She also enjoys ministering through outreach and evangelism. You can find and listen to her music on Apple Music, Spotify, and other streaming platforms under “Amarya Danaé”.