Welcome To The Final Year of A Very Sufjan Christmas

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The following is a  post from our sister site A Very Sufjan Christmas.
Follow us on Twitter at @SufjanChristmas or on Instagram at @SufjanChristmas to enjoy daily song write-ups this December!

As I write this, we stand on the precipice of what could very well be our final year of A Very Sufjan Christmas. 

When my friend Kyle Meyers and I first came up with the idea for this site back in 2018, it all started as a joke. A Sufjan Stevens Advent calendar, how novel! It was such a goofy idea, and so Sufjan. While my initial reaction was nothing more than a mere laugh, it quickly dawned on me that with 100 total songs at our disposal and 25 days on an advent calendar, we could conceivably write about every single Sufjan Christmas song over the course of four years. At that point, my reaction suddenly shifted from “that’s funny” to “we must do this.” I sprinted off to lock down usernames and a domain in our name, and the rest is history. 

That first year of the website almost felt like an exercise in finding out how Sufjan Stevens fans we knew. Over the years, we’ve sourced writers from places like /r/indieheads and /r/sufjan, as well as our personal Rolodexes of music nerd friends and random Twitter mutuals alike. In the second and third years, I ran this site by myself, sourcing 25 writers each year, editing every article, running all the social media, and keeping the Christmas spirit alive thanks to a constantly rotating crew of talented writers. 

As you would expect, many of the biggest songs within Sufjan’s Christmas oeuvre were covered in our first year. Then the remaining “most popular” songs were the next to go within the second year, and so on. We now find ourselves at the onset of the fourth year of this site, which means we are down to our final 25 songs. 

Over a four-year-long process of elimination, we now find ourselves whittled down to 25 of the weirdest, shortest, most obscure Sufjan Christmas songs. This is the island of misfit toys. The songs that have been passed over for three years. The songs that nobody wanted to write about until there was nothing left. That’s an interesting challenge — one that I’m sure will result in our most fascinating collection of write-ups yet. 

If this sounds like something that you’d be interested in participating in, please visit our writer application page here to toss your hat in the ring. Just be warned that the song you’re looking for probably isn’t there. 

On the Sufjan Front, this year our boy released a five-part two-and-a-half-hour electronic album as well as a fantastic collaborative concept album with labelmate Angelo De Augustine. He’s an unstoppable folk machine, and that’s why we love him.

Much like Mr. Steven’s discography, each year of this site has brought unique challenges and allowed us to tell different stories. I’ve run this site from three different states, and as a result, each year of a Very Sufjan Christmas feels hyper-distinct in my mind. It’s always easier to see those things in hindsight, but this project has been an exciting, tiring, inspiring tradition over the last few years, and I’m excited to finally “complete” it this year.

While I’m talking about exciting things, I’d also like to formally welcome Bethany Clancy and Wes Muilenburg to the Sufjan Christmas team. Bethany Clancy is a writer from Buffalo whose work you can find all over the music blog Unsigned Spotlight. Wes Muilenburg is a Minneapolis-based writer, primarily contributing to Ear Coffee, the blog and podcast that they co-founded in 2017. They also play in the band NATL PARK SRVC who released an excellent album earlier this year. They are both joining me this year as editors, and I can’t thank them enough for taking that weight off my shoulders. Aside from the help editing, having these two by my side checking over our submissions will be an absolute joy and will help ensure we finish out this project on a strong note. It’s probably obvious, but I couldn’t be happier to have them on board. 

So that’s where we’re at; three editors, a bunch of writers, and 25 of the weirdest Sufjan Christmas songs possible. It’s going to be a fun year, and I’m genuinely excited to share another holiday season with you all. 

Tiring and time-consuming as running this site may be, it’s one of the most rewarding parts of my holiday season, and I relish being able to share these stories with the world. As always, thank you for reading along, thank you for being here, and thank you for sharing your holiday spirit with us. We’ll see you all on December 1st. 

Love Taylor, Bethany, and Wes.

A Very Sufjan Christmas is Back For Another Year!

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The following is a post from our sister site A Very Sufjan Christmas.
Follow us on Twitter at @SufjanChristmas or on Instagram at @SufjanChristmas to enjoy daily song write-ups this December!

I’m not going to sugar-coat it, this year has been rough. So much so that I debated whether or not I even wanted to do A Very Sufjan Christmas this year. After all, how much do you feel like celebrating? Because I certainly don’t. 

Between the ongoing global pandemic, a demoralizing election cycle, and a fascist government that’s systematically brutalizing and murdering its own citizens, most days it feels like there isn’t much to look forward to. That said, time is indifferent and marches onward regardless of how we feel or what we think. Once the leaves began to change this fall and December crept over the horizon of my calendar I realized we could use some holiday cheer this year more than ever.

I’m going to level with you guys, running this blog is a lot of work. Even though I’m not personally writing every post, I’m still just one man wrangling 25 writers, editing 25 pieces, publishing 25 articles, and scheduling 25 days of social media. This is all on top of my day job and my other music blog over at Swim Into The Sound. 

I say this not to earn pity points, but because I know every one of you reading this is probably in a similar position. You might be better off than me, hell you might be worse off than me, but we’re all living through the same thing, and it brings me great joy to see how much cheer this blog spreads each year. 

That sense of tangible holiday cheer is worth all the countless hours and late nights I spend throughout these last two months of the year. I get to revel in the stories of other people’s Christmases past and help share them with the world. They’re not always wholesome, but neither is life. Either way, I love being at the epicenter of this communal outpouring of Christmas spirit. The fact that it’s themed around an artist I love is just a bonus. 

Speaking of which, 2020 has been a banner year for Sufjan. We received not only the first studio album of his in five years, but a groovy electronic record on top of that. If you’re still hungry for more Sufjan-related content to tide you over till December, I published a retrospective on Carrie & Lowell earlier this year that I’m quite proud of. 

Personal plugs, Sufjan-related updates, and global temperature checks aside, I hope you’re all doing okay. This blog will run on the same schedule as years past; starting December 1st, you’ll see a new post from a different writer every day until Christmas. I encourage you to bookmark this page, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and even reddit to keep up with the posts. You can also visit the archive to read the previous year’s posts if you’re already feeling the Christmas spirit. 

If you’re interested in participating in the blog this year or next, please reach out to us on any of those platforms linked above or via our email sufjanchristmas@gmail.com.  

Other than that, all I can ask is that you share this website with someone you think you might enjoy it. If you find an article that really connects with you, share it, text someone about it, post it on your story, that means the world. Even reach out to the writer, each author’s social media accounts are (almost always) linked at the bottom of each write-up, and there’s nothing quite like random words of affirmation from a stranger, especially around the holidays. 
With all that said, I hope you are all doing okay. I love you all, and I’m beyond excited to share another 25 fantastic write-ups with you this year. 

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, stay safe. 

A Very Sufjan Christmas is Back

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The following is a post from our sister site A Very Sufjan Christmas.
Follow us at @SufjanChristmas on Twitter or @SufjanChristmas on Instagram to enjoy daily song write-ups this December!

It’s finally November, and that can only mean one thing: Sufjan Season is officially upon us!

This winter, A Very Sufjan Christmas will be returning for another post each day from December first until Christmas Day. It’s going to be the same drill as last year; every post will be penned by a different author who will be discussing a different Sufjan Christmas song. 

There will be sad posts, happy posts, nostalgic posts, long-winded posts, artful posts, and everything in between. Our contributors range from musicians, teachers, producers, and above all else, Sufjan fans. It brings me great honor to be able to share their Christmas spirit with you, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy reading these write-ups as much as I’ve enjoyed organizing them.

We’ve made the site super easy to keep up with. Each new write-up is uploaded directly to our home page (www.sufjanchristmas.com), so you can simply bookmark that URL (maybe even make it your homepage) and then visit it each day of December for a fantastic new write-up!

You can also follow us on Twitter at @SufjanChristmas, on Instagram at @SufjanChristmas, or even on reddit at /u/SufjanChristmas where we’ll be posting daily discussions of each article over at the /r/Sufjan subreddit.

If you’re just too excited to wait for December, you can always read back through last year’s posts here, or browse some of our supplemental reading material for additional Sufjan Christmassy goodness. 

No matter what your holiday looks like, whether you’re spending it alone, with friends, family, loved ones, or pets, we consider ourselves lucky to be even a small part of it. Whether you’re going to be in church, flying back home, or fighting your way through a shopping mall, we hope that this site will provide a small respite from the Christmas Chaos this December. As tiring and hectic as this time of the year may be, we hope that this site will serve as a reminder of the good that the holidays can bring. We hope that this communal showing of Christmas spirit helps you make it to the end of the year, or at the very least, will give you something to read as you avoid weird family members or find yourself stuck in line at the mall.

Once again, I am astonished not only by people’s willingness to contribute to this site and share their stories, but the fact that other people take their time to read what’s posted here warms my heart and fuels my Christmas spirit. I think I speak for everyone on the team when I say that you readers mean the world to us, so thank you in advance for a fantastic holiday season. We’ll see you all in December when our first write-up goes live.

Until then, Peace, Love, and Christmas Trees. 
Love, Taylor and the rest of the A Very Sufjan Christmas Staff.

A Very Sufjan Christmas

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The following is a welcome post from our sister site A Very Sufjan Christmas. Follow us at @SufjanChristmas on Twitter or @SufjanChristmas on Instagram to enjoy daily song write-ups this December!

The holidays are our greatest gift. Regardless of surface-level differences in how we celebrate this time of year, the one thing we all share is tradition. It doesn’t matter if you observe Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or nothing at all, every one of us have rituals we use to get us through the winter. It’s the coldest, darkest, most inhospitable time of the year, and that’s easier to get through when we’re closer to other people, both physically and psychologically. Tradition is survival. Tradition is human.

That is the true meaning of Christmas. 

Not presents.
Or Santa Claus.
Or even Jesus.

Christmas represents universal tradition. A communal coping mechanism evolved on a species-wide level for the purpose of survival on both a physical and spiritual level. Over time, Christmas has been twisted to mean hundreds of different things. The truth is Christmas is what you make of it, and that’s what makes it the greatest holiday in the world. 

While Christmas has endured in the pop-cultural landscape for far less time than the holiday itself, it has still been around long enough for millions of different traditions to develop. From Coca-Cola popularizing Santa Claus to Montgomery Ward’s creation of Rudolph, there are a seemingly infinite number of touchstones that we share as a culture. Movies, TV, music, food, smells, shapes, and symbols all seep into our head from a young age, giving us a complicated, tangled web of connections and bonds to this complicated and tangled time of year. 

Oppositely, there are just as many individual traditions that we carry out on a much smaller scale. Whether it’s watching A Christmas Story with your family or making the same cookies every year with your roommates, there are both universal celebrations and personal ones. Among this delicate balancing act of traditions, vacations, gifts, and rushing around it’s important to slow down and have a personal escape during this hyper-communal time of year. For many people, one of the newest additions to this Personal Christmas Canon is Sufjan Stevens’ holiday music. 

While you may recognize him from his contributions to 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, Sufjan has been creating soul-affirming and critically-acclaimed folk music for nearly two decades. Aside from landmark artistic creations like Illinois, Age of Adz, and Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan has also displayed his personal devotion to the holidays with a catalog of two multi-hour Christmas compilations. 

Religion, Christianity, and family have been a constant throughline of Sufjan’s discography, so the Christmas holiday proved to be both a fascination for Sufjan as well as a synthesis of all these themes. Releasing one EP a year from 2001 to 2011, Sufjan has birthed to exactly 100 Christmas songs over the course of one decade. Some original, some covers, some standards, each entry is lovingly-crafted and amounts to more than 4.5 hours of Christmas spirit. These songs are collected on Songs For Christmas and Silver and Gold, two releases that have warmed the hearts of indie fans and Christmas lovers alike. 

A Very Sufjan Christmas is a blog dedicated to every one of these songs. Much like we all celebrate the holiday season in our special way, every listener has a unique connection with Sufjan’s extensive body of Christmas-based work. As such, each post on this website will tackle one specific Sufjan Christmas song from a different writer’s perspective as we countdown the days till Christmas. Maybe they’ll talk about their experience with Sufjan, or their memories attached to that one song. Maybe they’ll just write about the music itself. 

These songs are a window into the traditions and lives of the writer. There are few albums that have opened this many spiritual doors for this many people, and that’s why these songs must be celebrated. These are the soundtracks to Christmases past and the inner lives of music fans the world over.

You’ll quickly find that each song is a beautiful work worthy of its own celebration. Whether this is your first experience with Sufjan, or you are a long-time fan, we hope you find as much connection, warmth, and joy in these songs as we did when we first heard them. We hope you connect with these stories and that they allow you to reflect on your own traditions and those of your family. Most of all, we hope you enjoy the music and we wish you a very Sufjan Christmas this year. 

Welcome to our Winter Wonderland. 

Love, Kyle, Taylor, and the rest of the A Very Sufjan Christmas Staff.