By Gerrit Feenstra

On Wednesday, November 22, 2006, I stepped off the school bus and rounded the corner into my cul-de-sac to find Mom in the driveway packing the Chevy Suburban full of food. The garage was open, making our collection of packing boxes visible for the whole neighborhood to see. It had been a few months since we moved into the rental, but normalcy still felt absent from our daily routines. Nothing about this house looked or felt like home. A stucco-laden cookie-cutter model from a catalogue of indistinguishable options, it represented a life interruption, a blank page in the book between proper chapters. The garage and its many boxes reflected that.

“Go pack a bag, now,” Mom said. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

I went to my room, which itself felt only half lived-in. I grabbed my CD Walkman, my favorite zip hoodie and a beanie. Beyond these staples, packing was just a matter of counting out socks and underwear to match the number of days and topping off with the one pair of pajama pants I’d wear all weekend.

We were headed to my grandparents’ cabin up in Payson, Arizona, to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with my aunts, uncles, and many younger cousins. Despite its spacious five bedrooms and nine total beds (14 if you counted couches, pull-outs, and cots), cabin fever would undoubtedly set in around noon tomorrow. Usually, this happened some time between the siren alarm of tears coming from the game of tag being in the yard of pine needles and the endlessly delayed mealtime brought on by a roast cooking straight from the deep freeze.

But there was one thing that would keep me sane: my guitar. I packed the still-shiny acoustic into its hard case and stashed five picks for safety.

Ten minutes later, we were pulling out of the driveway - Mom driving, me in the front passenger seat, and my sister in the back, surrounded on all sides by overnight bags, jackets, and food.

“Oh,” Mom said, rummaging through her purse and handing me a package, “this came in the mail for you.”

I tore the package open. There, in my hands, was Songs for Christmas by Sufjan Stevens. It had arrived at my house no more than thirty minutes before we needed to leave for Thanksgiving. This was fate.

While still a relatively recent Sufjan convert, I had pre-ordered the CD box set directly from Asthmatic Kitty. I remember thinking it was reasonably priced for a five-disc collection, at least on my limited 15-year-old budget. Not only was the record bound to be amazing, I’d also made a savvy choice.

“Can we listen?” I asked, showing my mom the Christmas-y box art.

“Too early,” she returned, making an aggressive lane change across two lanes of traffic. “Not even December.”

The long drive was made longer by holiday traffic. It gave me plenty of time to pick through the contents of the box, relishing the unique cover art of each volume, wondering what songs like “Come On! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance!” sounded like. But the biggest surprise of all was the lyric book. Every one of the forty-odd songs had a chord sheet to go along with it. These songs weren’t just meant to be heard, but to be played.

I’d only recently started taking guitar lessons, but with tools like the CAGED system, a capo, and a basic understanding of barre chords (if not an actual ability to play them), I had all I needed to brave the guitar tabs I could find online. That being said, I still found most of them exorbitantly difficult. My brain didn’t work in the form of pentatonic scales and pretentious solos. I much preferred basic chord progressions and the relationships of the notes therein. These were easier to manipulate and muck about with, humming little vocal melodies alongside, maybe even trying my hand at lyrics of some kind. If I liked something I’d picked out of the ether, I’d jot it down in my big red notebook. My mediocre abilities did little to keep me from my ultimate goal: staving off boredom.

While it didn’t always take place at the cabin in Payson, everything else about the Thanksgiving tradition was consistent. The house would be far too full, the cousins would run around everywhere like the little savages they were, and somewhere tucked away in a corner, you’d find me, passing time inside my head, contented, yet feeling the full weight of my unlikeness to this collection of individuals known as my family. An engrossing book had helped in previous years, but the guitar was on another level. Here was a magical device that sent my family running, lest they be subjected to torture at the hands of that master of cruelty: the developing artist.

Upon arrival, I helped Mom with the bags and claimed one of the beds on the mezzanine. Then, I took my guitar and my Walkman to the couch by the central fireplace and cracked open the Songs for Christmas lyric book. On page 1, the first song detailed (after the “Silent Night” intro) was “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” done in a somber, frigid tone that paired well with the chilly air outside. I listened back to the track a few times and then tried my hand on the guitar, singing along tentatively, so as not to alert the attention of my cousins, wherever they might be. Yes, this would be my entire weekend, and it would be wonderful.

Hours passed, though for all intents and purposes, it could have been days. I had made my way through Volume 1 and was nearing the end of Volume 2 when a strange, ancient carol struck my fancy. I listened to the short recording a few times, then played it to myself with glee. The D-flat key fit the voice inside my head perfectly, and after a few rounds, that voice found its way out and floated quietly above my strumming as I stared into the softly crackling fire.

Another voice broke my attention. “Oh! I know that one!”

I turned. There was my Grandma Barb, smiling at me. “I don’t know many of the others, but I know that one. Bring a torch…” she sang quietly, walking back towards the kitchen.

“You’ve been listening?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“Yes! You have a lovely singing voice. I had no idea.”

I watched her exit. From across the space, I could hear women’s voices, chattering, laughing, elevated over the sounds of Emmylou Harris emanating from the kitchen stereo. I let myself feel the warmth of the fire and the smooth comfort of the couch. I felt grounded in this moment, and in the holiday, for the first time in a long time.

As the years passed, Grandma Barb became my de facto first audience. I offered her my new recordings before anyone else. She gave me honest feedback and provided meaningful commentary, but the critique was always the same: the vocals are far too quiet. Years later, I would get to sing for Barb one last time, at her funeral. She requested that I play the Eddie Vedder song “Rise” some six months before. I was happy to oblige.

“Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” is a 17th-century Christmas carol from Provence, France. It centers around two farmhands, Jeanette and Isabella, who, while checking on the farm stable, stumble upon the Nativity. It is equal parts joyful celebration and hushed lullaby, as the two women do not want to wake the Christ child while he smiles in his sleep.

I did not know any of this when I was 15. I didn’t know any of this for 19 more years, until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now. I love the idea of composer Nicolas Saboly sitting in his den, cooking up original Christmas ditties, just like Sufjan, and thinking to himself, “What if it was the Nativity but with two more chicks?” C'est magnifique.

Sufjan’s 2002 rendition, brief and blissfully understated in its lo-fi, cars-passing-in-the-background presentation, represents everything my 15-year-old self aspired to capture. Guitar in hand, I wanted to play music that felt interwoven into the fabric of the day-to-day. Maybe I wasn’t yet ready to share my songs with the world, but the sketches in my big red notebook had become a diary, not of the details and minutiae of the passing days, but of the feelings they called forth. And just like the Songs for Christmas fakebook that taught me to play “Bring A Torch” on the fireside couch, each entry had a series of chords written above the lines. They indicated to the reader, here, here is where the feeling changes. Even when you can’t hear it, you know it’s there.

Db Ab Db Ab Db

Hush, hush, peacefully now He sleeps.

Gerrit Feenstra lives and writes in Phoenix, AZ. He has contributed to the Phoenix New Times, as well as online publications like Stereogum. He has written blog content for NPR and KEXP. His only social media vice is Letterboxd (@djnorentalcap). He plays music under the moniker Dog Complex. His latest LP, My Body Is Going Through Changes, is available on Spotify and Apple Music.