Hello friends, it’s my distinct pleasure to welcome you back for another year of A Very Sufjan Christmas. In this case, “another year” might actually be underselling it, because this marks an entirely new edition of the project starting from the very top, but before we get into that, I think a bit of a re-introduction is in order.

My name is Taylor Grimes, and I’m a writer from Portland, Oregon, who runs an independent music publication called Swim Into The Sound. While I’m a year-round music dork on that site covering emo, punk, and various forms of alternative music alongside a host of other talented writers, A Very Sufjan Christmas is a project that I started back in 2018 as a way to lean into my hyper-specific love for holiday music.

At the time, the idea of an entire website devoted to all 100 Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs seemed hilarious. I committed to the bit by purchasing a domain, locking down some usernames, and enlisting a bunch of my internet friends to help out. Then, starting on December 1st, we published one essay every day until Christmas, Advent calendar style. After sharing those first 25 pieces, we continued this tradition every year until 2021, when we had finally written about each and every one of Sufjan’s holiday songs, effectively completing this project.

Over the next couple of years, a small team and I attempted to turn this “finished” collection of essays into a book. This involved putting everything in chronological order, going back through all one hundred pieces of writing for a closer round of unifying edits, laying everything out, designing it, and spending a ton of money trying to get it all printed and shipped out. That proved to be more work than any of us could bite off, and I’ve been beating myself up for the last two years, feeling like I failed to produce this finished product.

This brings us to 2025, a year that’s been uniquely hellish and demoralizing. On the personal front, I’ve been looking for a job, meeting rejection every day, and have found myself uprooted from the community I’ve been a part of over the last couple of years in North Carolina. Zoom further out, and we’re grappling with widespread misery and desperation the likes of which we’ve never seen. After years of witnessing a genocide through our phone screens, the chickens have come home to roost, starving the vulnerable, disappearing those that can’t speak for themselves, and imposing violence on anyone who dares stand in their way. It’s a uniquely hard time to be alive, and as I meditated on all of this over the fall, it felt like we could all use a little Christmas.

I think it’s important to have sources of joy and happiness in times like these. When everything is shrouded in darkness, any light you can muster makes a world of difference. It remains to be seen how bad things will get, but right now, we’re on track to have a shoestring holiday season with less travel and less togetherness. If How the Grinch Stole Christmas taught us anything, it’s that Christmas isn’t about the stuff; it’s about the people and the spirit. I guess that’s the lesson in every Christmas special, but you get my point. It only made sense to break out the one Christmas project at my disposal and spark it up as a tinder for as much holiday spirit as it’s worth, because we need it now more than ever.

So yes, the short version is that A Very Sufjan Christmas is back. Starting today, we’re accepting 25 people who want to write about their favorite Sufjan Stevens Christmas song, and everything is on the table. If you have a track you’d like to write about, head over to this page, fill out the application, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. This will mostly be on a first-come, first-served basis, so don’t overthink it and don’t dilly-dally.

I am someone who believes that everyone has a story to tell. It’s worth looking inward to decide if you have something that you want to excavate and share with the world. It can be daunting, but I’ll be here as an editor and sounding board, and you’ll be sharing your thoughts with other good-natured Sufjan fans. Even if you don’t consider yourself a “writer,” I can assure you that you still have a unique perspective, associations, and story to share. In the first iteration of this project, some writers delved into the histories and religious backgrounds of the hymns Sufjan was interpreting, while others got silly or speculative by analyzing the lyrics of his originals. Some people shared heartrending stories of Christmases past, while others reveled in the traditions or peculiarities of their families. The point is that if you want to be involved in this project, I believe you have something worth saying about at least one of these songs, and it would be my honor to help you share them with the world.

All I know is that we can’t give up, we can’t lie down, and we shouldn’t be alone. Even if you spend your holiday here as a passive spectator, I’m glad to be in community with you. I’m looking forward to another year of this project and sharing a new essay each day of December. I love having A Very Sufjan Christmas as a big, shared tradition, and I’m excited to see where the second iteration of this project goes.

Thank you, I love you, happy holidays.
I’ll see you all in December.