By Douglas Bleggi

There is an essay in Sufjan Stevens’ first Christmas box set called “Christmas Tube Socks,” where he describes how he eventually succumbed to Christmas’s charms, warts and all, after a lifetime of shunning it due to family strife. He refers to the emotion that seized him one day as “That Creepy Christmas Feeling” — a kind of haunting warmth that became the drive for his decade-plus dedication to creating Christmas music.

Coming in dead center on Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas is the beating heart of the whole project: “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” A three-minute sigh sandwiched between a rousing “O Holy Night” and a chiming celesta instrumental. It’s not the first “serious” song on the box (personally, I take this whole thing very seriously), but it’s the moment where shit gets real. The most Carrie & Lowell moment, if you will, although musically, it’s very much in step with the Neil Young influence that can be heard on mid-00s Sufjan like “Jacksonville” and “Sister.”

A guitar and banjo shuffle along like they’re on an aimless walk. A piano’s sustain comes in after the first verse like a wistful sigh. Lyrically, we get only a handful of sentences which act more as impressionist images than an actual story, but it’s in that simplicity that one can project onto this song. A sort of “insert your worst Christmas ever here” canvas.

For Sufjan’s protagonist, this worst Christmas is the one where his father throws a fit and tosses presents into the wood stove. His sister flees the house to collect herself at the local schoolyard with her books. Earlier, he intones the questions “Can you say what you want? Can you be what you want?” after shoveling snow in the driveway and a seemingly merry ride down a hillside on a sled. That’s all we get. We know in time the snow will rise, and in time the Lord will rise — a metaphor for cycles of sadness and hardship into joyfulness and redemption throughout the seasons. The chord progression pitter-patters along like a few leaves blowing in a wandering wind. Before you know it, the song ends, and we’re left with a single voice (Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond) singing the melody one last time before it too is extinguished.

Christmas can be a time of relaxation and fun with your family, but it can also be suffocating due to the insinuation that you must be the most amicable, warm, joyful version of yourself.

I’ve always enjoyed the season a great deal, but it frequently has felt haunted by the ghost of happy times. Every year, there will always be a night or two where I drive around my hometown and listen to Christmas music. The most cathartic moments of these drives will be whenever I reach for this kind of broken holiday music, the ones that seem haunted by memory (see also Cassie Ramone’s brilliant Christmas in Reno). You look at all the houses glowing in the night and wonder, “What’s going on in there?” Are these people in possession of that mythical perfect Christmas where no one gets sick, no relationships end, and where no family members lash out at each other?

One Christmas not too long ago, I was sitting on my parents’ couch, staring at a family member who had recently physically attacked me at a bar. Apologies were issued, but nothing felt truly resolved, and I had to pretend everything was still normal between us to avoid upsetting anyone else in my family. The house I always looked forward to returning to every year suddenly felt like a prison. Any chance I could get, I would slip out and drive around as I always did, but now it felt like a much-needed therapy session. “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” was played frequently. “Silent night / nothing feels right” felt almost too on-the-nose.

The turmoil of this specific Christmas is no longer at the forefront of my yearly trips back home, but the whispered prayer of “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” will always be summoned. The older one gets, the greater the chance that some personal darkness is lingering. Heartbreak, death, and betrayal will always factor a role one way or another, but “That Creepy Christmas Feeling” (complimentary), as Sufjan puts it, will always be an absurd salve through everything, and the highs and lows of Christmas past will continue to be a storied quilt of them all.

Doug Bleggi is a DJ and former music journalist. He has written for Brooklyn Magazine, Stereogum, and a bunch of websites that don’t exist anymore. He is the founder of Young Adult Friction: an indie & alt dance party.