Garth Makes Nice

12/03/1998 at 12:00 AM EST

Oklahoma favorite son Garth Brooks was in New York's Rockefeller Center Tuesday to promote "Garth Brooks and the Magic of Christmas," the NBC special he's shooting with Trisha Yearwood, Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett on Wednesday. (Admittedly, it's a bittersweet holiday for Garth -- his first without his mother, who died this summer.) But when asked why he's shooting in Gotham and not in Tulsa, the Stetson-wearing country star told PEOPLE Online: "No offense to where I'm from, and no offense to anyone else in the world, but when you think of Christmas you think of New York."