The Midnight Clear - Sufjan Stevens
This song was foregrounded in my attention because of its inclusion on
this holiday playlist (recommended if you like the songs I've been sending out) but Sufjan Stevens in general is a part of my Christmas music canon. The screed he wrote
to accompany Silver & Gold, the collection of his annual xmas EPs from 2006-2010, is the best thing I've ever read about xmas music:
Christmas is a drag. Year after year, winter upon winter, we find ourselves “going through the motions of merriment,” possessed by a fervent celestial fever, conquered, squandered, beaten, broken, reduced to that clammy, pre-pubescent spoiled brat kid of our childhood, throwing a fit on Santa’s lap, faced with the hard-candy facts of reality, knowing for certain we will never really get what want for Christmas.
Or in life, for that matter.
This is the true horror-show catharsis of Christmas: the existential emptiness that perseveres in the heart of modern man as he recklessly pursues his search for happiness and comes up empty handed.
And yet, he finds something redeemable about Christmas and its music, both later in his essay and in this song. Its chorus articulates a sentiment I've often identified with:
I will delight, I will delight in this/Though you may doubt it.
- Tessa