For Blake Shelton, this Christmas will mark the first without his father, Dick, who passed away in January after an illness. While discussing his holiday album Cheers, It’s Christmas and his Dec. 3 NBC television special with Country Weekly, Blake recalled that final Christmas Eve with Dad.

With Dick in his hospital bed, Blake arrived with gifts, ready to spend the night. “My sister, she has a husband with two kids now, and they were doing their normal Christmas Eve with the kids. And Miranda has a tradition of going out and spending Christmas Eve with her family in Texas, and I normally go down there with her, too. But I said, ‘If it’s OK with everybody, I’m just going to stay up here with Dad,’” Blake says. “He got a lot sicker after that, and I think if everybody in the family had known, you couldn’t have fit another person in the hospital room.”

As it was though, it was just father and son.

“It ended up being Dad and I on Christmas Eve, sitting in his hospital room and watching Dumbest Stuff on Wheels for about four hours on his little TV there in the room. I wouldn’t trade that night for anything.

"I brought a few gifts for him that people sent with me, so he got to open some things that night," he adds. "It was a special night, it really was.”

For more on Blake, his holiday album and TV special, pick up the Dec. 10 issue of Country Weekly, on stands Nov.30.