You make it sound like Christmas is a 4-letter word!

For those of you tuning into an in depth review of last night's finale to the Veronica Mars "Who Was the Campus Rapist" mystery...this is not that blog. After careful thought, I decided that it was unfair to post such a reivew at this time. I have a couple of readers who are VM fans or at least budding fans and I would hate to ruin the ending. I will say this, all in all it was a pretty good ep and who didn't love Mac's "Ask Me About My STD" t-shirt. I soooo want one of those. Perhaps I will write a review before the next mystery kicks off, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you...that won't be until January 2007 at the earliest!

Well, Christmas is in the air...or at least on the muzak everywhere. Unfortunately, that signals the time of year in which Christmas music gets ruined by perky pop groups hoping to sell a new record of 'classic' songs played non-stop. After years of Christmas retail, I thought I had killed any possibility of ever liking holiday music again. Then it turns out Sufjan Stevens makes ELFI mixes. Well, not like I do, but still for 5 years he created Christmas albums for friends and family, documenting the times and his feelings concerning the holiday season. What he has created is brillant...the work of a genius. First of all you get to listen to the evolution of his music from 2001 to the present and second he plays an interesting collection of classic Yuletide hits, hymns, and originally pieces like the catchy "Get Behind Me, Santa!"
One of the things I love most about Sufjan's music is that he is a musician that sings, not a singer that can play an instrument. He has an interesting voice that is not overwhelmingly "beautiful" or polished in sound, which means that you can singalong without stressing over how bad your voice sounds in comparison. With Sufjan it doesn't matter. I especially love that on the 2003 mix, "Ding! Dong!", Sufjan and a bunch of non-singing professionals belt out a version of "O Holy Night", a song usually reserved for opera singers and the like. You know what I am talking about - the "professional" singers. I kid you not, it is the most amazing version of the song I have ever heard, not because they hit all the notes in perfect harmony, but because they don't. They sing from the heart and to be honest, that is what music is supposed to be about!
Anyway, enough of my gushing about Songs for Christmas. I transcribed the cd intro Sufjan wrote since it explains Christmas music in such an interesting way. Go out and by the album...it will be well worth your money and time!

In December of 2001 (the Year of Epiphanies), I decided to record a collection of Christmas songs at home in Brooklyn, as a kind of musical benediciton to a tumultuous year. It would be something to give as a gift for my family and friends, something with which to appease the apprehension of everyday life, which had been uprooted by all the extraordinary events in the world.

What did the angles renouce in the wake of the shepherds' trepidation? "Have no fear," they petitioned with trumpet blasts and a garish display of constellations. But that's like waving a gun in a bank lobby and demanding: "Everybody stay calm!" Music, of course, works much differently. The most discriminating of chord progressions can disarm the most arrogant of men, including myself. Christmas music does that to the highest degree. It intersects a supernatural phenomenon (the incarnation of God) with the sentimental mush of our mortal lives (presents, toys, Christmas tree ornaments, snow globes, cranberry sauce), leaving in its pathological wake a particular state of mind one can only describe as "that warm, fuzzy feeling." Was this what I was after? The search for existential significance in all that sentimenal oatmeal? Perhaps, but I'm not so certain "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells" can be used as an exegesis for the big questions in life.

Or can they? I decided to find out, continuing the tradition year after year, plummeting into the abysmal canon of Yuletide carols, strumming the banjo, shaking the bells, tipping my Santa hat to Saint Nick, all the while assembling a ramshackle mix tape of Christmas "hits" (sometimes adding my own originals), wondering "What does it really mean to deck the halls with boughs of holly?" These short collections ("Songs for Christmas" EPs, I called them) were assembled at home, transferred to CD-R, sent out with stickers and stamps to family, friends and loved ones, year after year. I had a few accomplices whom I invited as transient collaborators: a college friends, a Presbyterian pastor and his wife, a string quartet, my little brother, to name a few. Whomever was around, I put them in front of a microphone and demanded: "Deck the halls with boughs of holly!" It's amazing what you can do with an 8-track and some mistletoe. I have great admiration for the people who participated in these musical exercises, sometimes against their better judgement. Perhaps they were just humoring me. At the very least, I discovered that sleigh bells are, in fact, difficult to play well (there is a technique to these kinds of things), and that Christmas music poses a cosmological conundrum in requiring us to sing so sweetly and sentimentally about something so terrifying and tragic. In the end, I had asembled five complete EPs in six years, skipping only one year, 2004, when I was anguishing over another album called "Illinois."

Which brings me to this elaborate box set. When I finally decided to "officially" release all this music (for better or for worse), I was determined to present each EP in its original form. A compliation would have been a cumbersome compromise. A "Greatest Hits" would have been heartbreaking. (How to choose?) It just seemed best to preservethe spirit of each individual EP - mistakes and all - as a document to the times. But I also wanted to augment the music with a lavish display of ornamentation - it just wouldn't be Christmas without all the festive frills and flourishes. Which might help explain the technicolor packaging, the chord charts, the animated video, the photographs, the comic strip, the family portrait, the essays, the short story, the Christmas stickers, all the incredible cornucopis of junk that has come to represent Christmas more than anything else. This is what it means to deck the halls, afterall. This is my gift to you. Enjoy - and have a Happy Christmas!
- Santa Sufjan