That Thing in December

I have little to say about Christmas anymore, so I will let Sufjan do the talking.

"...after years of enduring the Stevens Family Christmas Crisis, I grew to despise the Holidays with the kind of deep antipathy one usually reserves for things like racism and terrorism and corporate fraud[.]The sight of Santa Claus at shopping malls, the scent of candy canes, the insipid singing of carols-- these things roused in me a silent, sardonic, patronizing judgment against all of Western Civilization. At some point, perhaps my second year of college, Philosophy 101, I decided that Christmas was a social construct, along with dating, fast food, and the Super Bowl. I made a point of not coming home for the Holidays. I would have Christmas on my own, entrenched in my reading: Rumi poems, Descartes, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ayn Rand." - Sufjan Stevens, from "Christmas Tube Socks"

Or L'Engle, and Setterfield, and Lewis, and Haddon, and Brontë. I have heard that Rumi is excellent, though.

"[The Creepy Christmas Feeling] is the kind of feeling that causes a transformation of the heart and compels me to call my grandmother, to learn to love my parents, to respect my friends, to consider the immeasurable gift of life, the incarnation of God, the Christ Child, a newborn baby, lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, who would one day conquer the world not with brute force, but with love. For this reason, I no longer despise Christmas carols, I no longer resent my family, I no longer dread the Santa suits and the garish window displays and the gossipy Christmas newsletters." - Sufjan Stevens, from "Christmas Tube Socks"

I am glad Sufjan has had his Christmas Epiphany. Mine isn't here yet, though.