Five weeks and five albums… if you’ve reached this point in
the Sufjan Stevens yuletide voyage of self-discovery, you deserve a Christmas
cookie. Here is the path we have traveled from Black Friday until today,
Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve:
Sufjan Stevens played at Asbury Hall on Tuesday and you can
read all about that experience
here, in Tom Dennis’ thorough and thoughtful review. During the show, Sufjan echoed many of the themes and sentiments we’ve
been discussing here over the past four weeks, including what he referred to as
his “bi-polar” obsession with Christmas, resulting in his extremely varied
approach to holiday music. We’ve definitely seen Christmas music attacked from
pretty much every angle possible on the first four albums of
Silver & Gold, but like Stevens’
live show, everything thus far has just been an enormous build up to his final act: the
Christmas Unicorn.
Vol. 10 – Christmas
Unicorn, brings the total number of songs in the Sufjan Stevens Christmas
music catalogue to an even 100. This final album acts a bit like a reminder as to all that has been accomplished through the other nine volumes before the series finally reaches its climactic conclusion and delivers the definitive Sufjan Stevens
Christmas mission statement.
The album begins with a cover of “Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas” that bursts into the room like it’s the Grand Marshall of a
Christmas victory parade. The song is emblematic of the work Stevens did on Christmas Infinity Voyage (electronic
flourishes, soaring vocals), which is appropriate as the sound of that album
seemingly represented the pinnacle of Stevens’ acceptance and enjoyment of the
holiday. The delirious, joyous delivery of this song’s message (putting the bad
times behind you and celebrating) seems determined to convince you that having
a “merry little” Christmas is not merely a suggestion. After this fervent
opening, Stevens then re-visits many of the Christmas music tropes he
established on his prior albums.
“Up on the Housetop” is yet another example of Stevens
subverting a Christmas classic into something slightly less traditional and
slightly more sinister. It’s also representative of his more recent efforts, in
the generosity of the Christmas spirit, to share lead vocal duties, this time
with his frequent collaborator, Vesper Stamper. The song also finds Stevens
pulling another familiar trick, making his own lyrical contributions to a
classic (“Up on the housetop/ spirit of the dead/ anyone particular/ everyone
fed”) not just parroting the Christmas tradition, but building on it with
subjective embellishments.
“We Need a Little Christmas” is the characteristic,
exuberant sing-a-long on the album and it contains another message that more or
less sums up the Sufjan Stevens Christmas philosophy. Under a
rambunctious polka-beat and a crowd of carolers, the impact of the lyrics can
still be felt rather heavily in the context of understanding that Stevens has
been doing this for ten Christmases in a row now: “For I’ve grown a little
leaner/ grown a little colder/ grown a little sadder/ grown a little older/ and
I need a little angel/ sitting on my shoulder/ need a little Christmas now.”
It’s an old show-tune sentiment that seems eerily apt for someone who’s been
thinking about Christmas and recording songs for at least ten years before he
finally decided to tour the country and start celebrating with his friends and
fans.
Stevens also re-visits his “bi-polar” melancholic/optimistic
feelings about the holiday on “Happy Karma Christmas” and pays his respects to
the “Silent Night bracket” by interspersing three traditional carols throughout
the album played in 45-second bursts on “Christmas fife,” another regular
occurrence throughout the collection. This is all merely an opening act for the
true star of the show, however.
The penultimate number on Songs for Christmas is “Justice Delivers Its Death” (also called "Silver & Gold" in the video above). The song is
loosely based on the Burl Ives, Rudolph classic “Silver and Gold,” which gives
the album its name. You might not recall Sam the Snowman singing these lyrics,
however: “Oh I’m getting old/ Everyone wishes for youth/ How have I wasted my
life/ Trusting the pleasure it gives here on earth?” Stevens takes the line:
“How do you measure its worth/ just by the pleasure it gives here on earth?”
and forces a reckoning of this rhetorical question that the original song
failed to answer or even contemplate. The title of this compilation isn’t just homage
to a classic carol, it’s a legitimate inquiry into how we can possibly
appreciate something as vapid as the materialism of Christmas when the infinite
threats of life and death are constantly hanging over our heads.
The answer to this concern is Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas
thesis. It is the culmination of all that has come before it. The 100th song of his two Christmas box-sets. The finale of his live shows. The last stop on
the Sufjan Stevens Christmas express. It is his Ebenezer Scrooge waking up on
Christmas morning, a changed man, after witnessing his own, lonely death. It is
his George Bailey running through the streets of Bedford Falls screaming “Merry
Christmas movie house.” It is his “Grinch’s small heart grew three times that
day.” It is Christmas Unicorn.
One of the most common attributes of the mythical “unicorn”
(and my understanding comes largely from
Peter S. Beagle’s excellent modern fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn) is
their rarity. They are difficult to find. They are special. They are magical.
They transcend beauty and reality and mortal understanding. In short, they are
the perfect symbol for a Christmas character who is not easily seen, or
described, or understood. For someone
who knows and loves all of the competing, disparate, aspects of Christmas in a
way that seems logically impossible. For someone who sees Christmas as a
gigantic pile of materialistic absurdity, which completely undercuts its
original spirit, but loves that absurdity nonetheless due to the nostalgia and
joy and feeling of unique surreality that it provides, which in turn, creates its own new, honest spirit that is connected and authentic and beautiful and
miserable all at once, and somehow: it all makes sense. The majority of the
song, Christmas Unicorn, is nothing other than Stevens simply describing the
Christmas Unicorn himself and he espouses all of the above and more.
The lyrics read like a tornado swept through town and
engulfed every potentially competing aspect of Christmas (the religious, the
secular, the spiritual, the material, the traditional, the absurd), and mixed
all of those elements together, turning them into the character profile of the
Christmas Unicorn. He is all of it: Christmas warrior, Christian holiday, pagan
heresy, unbelievable mythology, materialistic American, seasonal affective
disorder, EVERYTHING. He is “the spirit of Christmas” in a way that no
individual character (Jesus, Gabriel, Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, Christmas Tree,
guy giving his wife a Lexus for Christmas in a commercial) could ever hope to
be.
The introduction portion of the song ends with Stevens
disclaiming that though “unicorns” are supposedly rare, he believes there are “others
just like him” and that they are, in fact, “legions wide.” It seems to be this
realization, that he is not alone, that many of us are actually Christmas
Unicorns and might not even know it, that is the final star on the tree, embodied
in the absolutely gut-punching, blissful musical moment that occurs at around the
6:27 mark.
This has seemingly been the entire point of this 100-song
Christmas music endeavor: to deliver this message. To wake the Christmas Unicorn
sleeper agents. To travel the country and celebrate with them in a costume made
of balloon animals, ribbons and Christmas lights. To understand that we can be
both self-aware of the negative aspects of Christmas yet earnestly revel in it without feeling guilty or ashamed. That we can blissfully stampede through fields
of Christmas trees while simultaneously singing “I love you” and “love will
tear us apart again” because it’s strange and beautiful and hypocritical and it’s
everything at once and it’s bi-polar and it’s Christmas.
Merry Christmas everyone.
I am a Christmas Unicorn
In a uniform made of gold
With a billy goat beard and a sorcerer’s shield
And a mistletoe on my nose
Oh I am a Christian Holiday
I’m a symbol of original sin
I’ve a pagan tree and a magical wreath
And a bowtie on my chin
Oh I am a pagan heresy
I’m a tragical Catholic shrine
I’m a little bit shy with a lazy eye
And a penchant for sublime
Oh I am a mystical apostasy
I’m a horse with a fantasy twist
Though I play all night with my magical kite
People say I don’t exist
For I make no full apology
For the category I reside
I’m a mythical mess with a treasury chest
I’m a construct of your mind
Oh I am hysterically American
I’ve a credit card on my wrist
And I have no home or a field to roam
I will curse you with my kiss
Oh I am a criminal pathology
With a history of medical care
I’m a frantic shopper and a brave pill-popper
And they say my kind are rare
But I’ve seen others in the uniform
Of a unicorn just like me
We are legions wide and we choose no sides
We are masters of mystique
For you are a Christmas Unicorn
I have seen you on the beat
You may dress in the human uniform child
But I know you’re just like me
