‘American Idol’ notes: Lee DeWyze, Kris Allen, Haley Reinhart

Who’s in the holiday spirit? With Christmas now just four short days away, we now have a pair of holiday-themed performances featuring a pair of former “American Idol” contestants, along with an emotional story from Kris Allen about how he is trying to remember those who died in the Sandy Hook tragedy a week ago.

Lee DeWyze takes on “O Holy Night” – This performance is coming from “The Ricki Lake Show,” and it is a rather beautiful (and acoustic) take on the classic carol. We often take advantage of just how difficult some of these Christmas carols are to actually perform when we hear them live, but this song especially is a beast thanks to its unusual key and high notes.

Ricki told Lee before the performance that she is a big fan, and he said that there will be a new album coming out from him at some point soon. (Of course, we’ll have more on that soon, as well.)

A sample from Haley’s show – In case you didn’t heart, Haley Reinhart recently performed a StageIt show with her family, and it was a reminder of just how musical the entire Reinhart family is. There aren’t too many videos out there from the show that we can really post here, but we do have a 20-second sample of Haley performing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” that gives you a sample of some of the holiday fun that was had.

Kris’ performance – There’s a Christmas tree in the background at a recent StageIt show from Kris, but this is emotional for a very different reason. The season 8 champ says that he wrote this song long before the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown happened, but he felt so emotionally affected by what transpired there that he connects the song to an extent with it now. Be sure to have your hankies ready before you click on the video below.

If you want to check out the latest promo for “American Idol” season 12, be sure to do so over at the link here.

Photo: Fox