Once upon a time, when I was on the verge of the impossible age of 30, I set out on a quest to find Christmas music I didn’t hate, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
I sought music that at once captured that seasonal sense of wonder and awe as only children seem to be able to experience anymore, while also critiquing the creeping mass of consumerism and self-righteousness that ruined it all in the first place. For I’d grown weary of Bing Crosby and Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas covers; and my soul was oppressed by the likes of “The Forgotten Carols”, Mannheim Steamroller, cheap supermarket Swing covers of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, a capella “Little Drummer Boys”, and all their ilk. No more, said I! I was on a mission to redeem the season.
As such, I started with the old counter-culture standards: The Kinks’ incendiary “Father Christmas“, The Who’s tongue-in-cheek “Christmas” from Tommy, John Lennon’s “Happy X-mas (War is Over)” (sue me, I like it). I then collected Holiday EPs by Low and Joshua James, two artists as eager to explore the season’s malaise as its euphoria–often at the same time.
Thus far, I’d only collected maybe an hour’s worth of Christmas music I didn’t hate. Things were looking grim. But then a true Christmas miracle happened:
I discovered Sufjan Stevens.
To say that Indie-darling Sufjan Stevens is obsessed with Christmas is to say the Pope is kinda Catholic; over the course of the millennium’s first decade, Sufjan released not one, not two, not three, but ten separate Christmas EPs, then collected them all into not one, but two different box-sets: 2006’s Songs for Christmas and 2012’s Silver and Gold. The ever-prolific Sufjan has released near as much Christmas music as he has “regular” music–in fact, I dare say that his “regular” releases are the sideshow, that in fact his true M.O., his raison d’etre, his calling, that for which he’ll be best remembered (well, besides “Chicago“), is his music for Christmas, in all of its contradictions and messiness and agony and ecstasy.
Of the two box-sets, Songs for Christmas has been out longer and thus has the larger reputation. His song “Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time!” is now considered a classic in certain Indie quarters, and rightfully so. But for my money, Silver and Gold is his masterpiece–and I don’t use that word lightly.
Examples: whereas the “Silent Night” that kicks off Songs for Christmas is just a quick, calming, 40-second acoustic ditty, the “Silent Night” that begins Silver and Gold is this intense and quivering rendition with layered vocals, shimmering piano, and anxious guitar. He has grown more confident in his song-writing prowess. The message is clear: Sufjan Stevens isn’t just going to sing about Christmas anymore, or even for Christmas, no–he’s now going to wrestle with Christmas at last and make it his own.
Another stark contrast: the “Joy to the World” on Songs for Christmas is a charming, but ultimately safe and generic acoustic number such as any Indie-folk singer might churn out by December; but the “Joy to the World” on Silver and Gold transforms into this wild electronica experiment at 1:48, and even mashes in his “Impossible Soul” chorus (“Boy we can do much more together/It’s not so impossible”) from 2010’s The Age of Adz. Again, on Silver and Gold, Sufjan no longer lets Christmas just happen to him, but makes Christmas his own.
More examples: while “It’s Christmas! Let’s be Glad!” on Songs for Christmas plaintively and pathetically pleads for Christmas to cheer him up for once, “Carol of St. Benjamin the Bearded One” on Silver and Gold takes Christmas by the throat. Here, Sufjan uses Christmas to meditate on how “the things you want in life/you have to really need,” how our most deep-seated desires are no idle consideration, but are “a matter of life.” That is, on Silver and Gold, Sufjan uses Christmas not for diversion but to consider the terrible questions; Christmas for Sufjan isn’t escapism anymore, but confrontation.
In that same vein, while most the tracks on Songs for Christmas are merely a much needed breather from supermarket radio, “Barcarola (You Must Be a Christmas Tree)” by contrast is a bona fide epic. It is a slow-burning build-up that uses the inevitable loss of the yearly Yuletide as a sublime meditation on the ephemerality of existence and eternity. It isn’t just one of Sufjan’s best Christmas songs, but one of his best songs period. It was at this point on Silver and Gold, back when I first gave it a listen in 2012, that I realized I’d stumbled onto something special.
Further highlights: the freewheeling, ecstatic “Christmas Woman” that remembers how Christianity was originally a Middle-eastern religion; the slightly-unhinged “I Am Santa’s Helper” and the definitely unhinged “Mr. Frosty Man“; the extra lyrics interspersed into his electronica-tinged “Angels We Have Heard on High” (“Is it power and wealth you’re after?” “The counting and commotion,” “Where dreams become your greatest danger…”); the techno-turns of “Good King Wenceslas” (which somehow seamlessly segues into Prince‘s own “Alphabet Street,” of all things); his brooding, anxious, minor-chord rendition of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!“; the anti-consumerist “Christmas in the Room;” his seemingly-straightforward “We Need A Little Christmas” that really foregrounds the song’s inherently desperate lyrics: “Because I’ve grown a little meaner/grown a little colder/grown a little sadder/grown a little older…”
These selections can only give a scattered sampling of this dazzling boxset. Really, I could write a dissertation on this collection. Contrasted against the dull uniformity of most easy cash-in Christmas collections, Silver and Gold is a staggering roller-coaster of diversity and daring that saves the best for last: Sufjan caps off this tour de force years-in-the-making with a masterstroke that somehow shouldn’t work at all, but totally does, “Christmas Unicorn.”
This song, by all rights, should just be campy, ridiculous, bloated, “so-bad-its-good,” so-twee-it’s-insufferable, etc; but that magnificent bastard Sufjan Stevens not only makes this song work, but transcend. Sufjan’s Christmas Unicorn is “a symbol for original sin,” “a pagan heresy,” “a tragical Catholic shrine,” “a mythical mess,” “a construct of your mind,” “hysterically American,” “a frantic shopper and a brave pill popper,” and “I know you’re just like me.” It doesn’t take an English major to realize that Sufjan isn’t describing a Christmas unicorn at all, but just Christmas itself–which in turn describes us. The Unicorn is the fun-house mirror that distorts to reveal, and doesn’t even have to distort all that much.
“But it’s alright,” he still sings repeatedly, “I love you.” Because for everything that’s absolutely wrong with Christmas–and for everything that Christmas reveals is wrong with us–our materialism, shallowness, selfishness, short-sightedness, hypocrisy, greed, just, like, all of our sins and weaknesses–Sufjan still loves Christmas, warts and all, and that includes us Holiday revelers as well. God in all His infinite mercy could be singing “Christmas Unicorn:” for He sent His Son that first Christmas specifically because He knew we are all terrible, awful, hypocritical, a bunch of unrepentant rapscallions–but it’s alright, He loves us anyways. Sufjan thoroughly understands the true meaning of Christmas, and all the awful implications that that entails.
And then for his coup de grace, Sufjan Stevens overlaps the extended chorus line of “Find the Christmas Unicorn” with the chorus from Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart Again.” This is a stroke of genius: for the love that brings us together will also tear us apart; the Christmas that enlivens us will also break our hearts; what we love most will most hurt us; what’s born must die just as what dies must resurrect, and the great secret is that these are all causes not for mourning, not for brooding, but for celebration! Sufjan Stevens’ great revelation here is that the purest, most perfect expression of the Spirit of Christmas was in a Joy Division song all along.
Such has been the transformative effect of Silver and Gold on me that, ever since its release, my relationship with other Christmas music has even been redeemed. I can now listen to Bing Crosby un-ironically again (albeit still in limited doses); the Mormon Tabernacle Choir blows my mind once more. I even snap along to Swing renditions of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” at the grocery store now and again. But it’s Silver and Gold that I’ve been waiting for the most all year long. Once upon a time, I set out on a quest to find Christmas music I don’t hate, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams thanks to Sufjan. This Christmas, Love will tear us apart again–but it’s alright, I love you.