With only eleven days left until Christmas, and only four days left until the "Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice" at Asbury Hall, we've reached the fourth week in our coverage of Sufjan Stevens' second 5-album Christmas compilation, Silver & Gold.

To quickly recap:

Sufjan Stevens really liked this thing called Christmas but couldn’t get his enthusiasm for it to agree with the vapid materialism that’s become the hallmark of the holiday. He spent some time trying to figure this out by breaking Christmas down, studying its roots, and building it back into something that harmonized the traditional with the modern.  By the end of his Christmas Infinity Voyage, it seemed as though Stevens had become significantly more comfortable with all of the complications presented by Christmas and might be ready to earnestly celebrate it again.

The fourth volume in the Silver & Gold compilation (and Stevens’ ninth Christmas album, overall) is called Let It Snow!, and for the most part, it really is nothing more than a straightforward celebration of the commonly understood present-day “spirit” of Christmas.

The album artwork has us back to relatively conservative territory (though there does seem to be something at least slightly sinister lurking under the faux-innocence of that mock-50’s shampoo advertisement). Musically, Stevens also pares things back from the experimentation of the last two albums (though some of the songs here do retain the electronic components of Christmas Infinity Voyage, indicating that they were recorded post-Christmas–epiphany). Overall, however, the nine songs on Let It Snow are upbeat and celebratory, seemingly a testament to having overcome the more negative aspects of the holiday.

The song choice here also reflects Stevens more fully embracing the secular idea of Christmas, as well as the modern notion of the “the Christmas season” and all that it entails. Almost all of the songs are either secular (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Santa Clause is Coming to Town,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas”) or are that peculiar brand of “Christmas” song that does not, explicitly, have anything to do with Christmas (“Sleigh Ride,” “Let It Snow”).

The album starts with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” which seems appropriate given that we last saw Stevens floating in the heavens, as far from “home” as he could possibly be. With its dreamy, 3/4-waltz time signature, it actually sounds as if Stevens is slowly descending back toward Earth, ready to re-join family and friends, along with "snow, mistletoe and presents on the tree." Of course, the “big reveal” of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is that the narrator might only be able to experience these things in his own head, but one way or the other, imaginatively or actually, we’re going to start enjoying this damn holiday.

The album next launches into a bright and bouncy version of what I had previously deemed the “king” of secular Christmas carols, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” I don’t think there is a single other song that so succinctly and powerfully (and threateningly!) states the mission-statement of the modern, non-religious Christmas holiday. Santa’s coming. This isn’t a joke. He knows what’s up, he knows whether you’ve been behaving, and here’s the bottom line: Good = presents. Bad = nothing. Get your shit together or Christmas is going to suck. It’s a pretty ominous message that is consistently belied by the fact that the melody to the song is basically the epitome of the “merry” in Christmas.

Stevens does subvert this a bit, however, by adding an outro to the song that more accurately reflects its true essence. While slowing down the tempo and scaling back the instrumentation, Sufjan and friends sing: “Watch what you’re doing/ always improving/ he keeps his eyes on the prize/ of your spirit/ He’s in the window/ gathering info/ he keeps his eyes on the prize/ of your person.” As my girlfriend has pointed out to me: this song could just as easily be about a serial killer. This seems to indicate that although Stevens is back among the living when it comes to celebrating Christmas, he hasn’t fully abandoned his former self-awareness. In fact, it seems that his ability to be skeptical of what Christmas has become, yet revel in it despite of that, has led to his increased enjoyment of the holiday.

Stevens goes on to embrace the best of the secular and the seasonal with recordings of “Sleigh Ride” (possibly one of the most thoroughly covered Christmas songs of all time) and “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” the Johnny Marks song best known for being sung during the celebratory conclusion of the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. While the takes on these classics are optimistic and joyful, Stevens continues to acknowledge his latent apprehensions about Christmas, though perhaps not with the imminent dread that he previously had.

A cover of “Let It Snow” is barely even recognizable as Stevens slows it down, switches it to a minor key and sings it in a near-whisper as if he’s trying not to wake some terrible beast. If you listen to the way he sings “let it snow” with nothing but haunting acoustic guitar accompaniment, a sparse bass drum, and a choir of voices that sounds like its being made to sing at gun-point, then look at that cheery cover of the Let It Snow! album again, it’s certainly easy to see those words in a different light. Stevens might be back to fully endorsing Christmas but he’s not about to do so at the cost of reminding you every once and awhile that this holiday still has the ability to evoke some darkness.

The only Stevens original composition here is called “X-Mas Spirit Catcher,” a song that plays on the idea of “catching” the very “spirit” of Christmas. “The spirit went where it went/ though it could not see forgiveness/ and when it came to pass again, enterprising in its legend/ the government did all it could, to be sure its power was given.” Stevens seems to be describing the link between “the spirit of Christmas” surrounding the original Christian mythology with the harnessing of that spirit by contemporary society for potentially unrelated purposes. Stevens’ appreciation for this link and that, perhaps, the “spirit” of Christmas is the same no matter what’s been done to it, is emblematic of his more recent work on these themes.

The album is rounded out with three songs sung by persons that are not Sufjan Stevens. Spreading the vocal workload around seems to be indicative of Stevens’ further efforts to join in the communal aspects of Christmas, which is further realized in the “Sing-A-Long” parts of his albums and live shows. Cat Martino writes and sings a song called “The Sleigh in the Moon” (an eerie, pretty song paying homage to the child-like wonder of waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve) and sings a cover of “Ave Maria” (an eerie, pretty song paying homage to the child-like wonder of Jesus’ mom). Sebastian Kreuger ends the album with a 40-second song that he wrote called “Christmas Face,” where he sings: “though I try to find my own way/ to make your Christmas face, your Christmas face/ your holly hair and tinsel eyes/ my efforts will disgrace.”

Basically, Christmas isn’t perfect. It seems once we’ve finally stopped treating it as some unachievable ideal and accepted that, it might even become fun again.