By Nathan Keil

One of the greatest challenges I have as a high school English Literature teacher is convincing my students, in an increasingly digital world, that reading poetry is an exercise in beauty and honesty. I’m often reminded of Robin Williams’ quote to his students in Dead Poets Society, recalling that poetry helps keep us alive. Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Wendell Berry, and Natasha Trethewey all “guest lecture” in my class, challenging and inspiring my students in this noble exercise. I love poetry. Its willingness to be so simple yet so profound is magical. Its ability to provoke, encourage, mourn, and celebrate all life’s occasions with rhythmic verse or blazing chaos never ceases to draw me in. Poetry is a beautiful gift, a mosaic of language and power.

He may set his verse to music rather than pen to paper, but Sufjan Stevens is a poet, and I’m not sure that any artist captures the emotional cocktail of the Christmas season quite like him. Whether classical interpretations, reimaginations, or seasonal originals, Sufjan is our most honest Christmas poet.

Poetry — Sufjan or otherwise — is often overlooked and its appreciation usually comes after missing or ignoring it the first time around. That is true for my relationship with Mr. Stevens. Despite being in high school when some of his foundational albums like Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois were released, his work eluded me. I even grew up in Northwest Ohio, less than an hour south of Detroit, where he was born! I remember occasionally hearing Sufjan’s name uttered in various social circles during my years at a small Christian college in Indiana, yet my curiosity still had not given me the nudge needed to give him a listen.

In 2015, when Carrie & Lowell was released, I could no longer refrain; I finally embraced the eccentricities and the possibility of transcendence capable in the melodies and instrumentation of Sufjan’s music. I rushed to Amoeba Records in Hollywood to purchase Illinois on CD, an album that voiced my love for the state of Illinois and admiration for Chicago, the city I called home before relocating to California. I was hooked, at least I thought I was, until his music became a passive participant in my musical rotation. The magic I felt just a year prior dissipated and got lost in the shuffle of life. That is, until it was reawakened in December 2020.

Like many, the first Christmas of the pandemic looked much different than the ones we were accustomed to. There would be no flights or large family dinners, no smattering of presents to behold or drinks to toast with. Despite the unique circumstances that this Christmas gifted us, the toxic mix of joy and melancholy sometimes felt at this time of year was not new to me; it felt as ingrained as Ohio State football games on Autumn Saturdays. Yet, I never had the words to truly articulate this complex emotional state that often consumed me in December. Surely, I couldn’t be alone. Enter my old friend, Sufjan, and his collection of Christmas necessities, Silver & Gold.

It was a Christmas miracle. Divine intervention… or maybe just a happy coincidence. Whatever the title, I had found the music and the artist to articulate my December depressive state. I listened to the album, top to bottom, backwards and forwards, enjoying the unexpected journey it invited me on. But it wasn’t long before one song asserted itself as the alpha — “Justice Delivers Its Death.”

The penultimate track examines the relationship between the human heart and finite earthly treasures, as well as the limited time we have to experience them. It can be a grim picture to follow the progression of the song, from acknowledging humanity’s lust for wealth and other luxuries to the fleeting nature of those treasures and our inevitable confrontation with death.

Not exactly the jolly tune we typically seek to get into the Christmas spirit, but perhaps a more accurate one that reflects the tensions many of us feel at this time of year. It is in this tension, the jumping from line to line, stanza to stanza, verse to verse, that Sufjan the poet forces us to confront our own ugliness and selfish desires in hopes of finding something more fulfilling. It is this honesty and uncomfortable accountability that we often ignore in other forms and interpretations, but the poetic nature of his music makes the message perfectly clear, and one we can no longer run from. What we long for on Earth cannot satisfy us forever, and until we accept this, we will continue to chase our insatiable appetite for the luxuries of life and not life itself.

Finding this gem during the COVID-19 pandemic certainly heightened the experience of thinking about health and death a bit more than I would like to admit, but the concern, not just for myself, but for my family in Ohio and Tennessee (states with very different approaches to public health and safety than California), was heavy and burdensome. Sufjan normalized my concerns and validated them, even if my catastrophizing thankfully didn’t come to fruition.

Although the state of panic around COVID-19 is not what it was five years ago, my feelings remain the same. Mass shootings, media censorship, the rise of authoritarianism; one problem replaced with another, hopelessness and injustice abound. Stevens sings, “Lord, come with fire.” Maybe that is what we all need: a cataclysmic reset. Perhaps that is hyperbolic, but at least a reset in our priorities — our obsession with power and wealth, our collective disdain for those who are different from us. In Christmas terms, our proclivity for consumerism, for the grandeur of decoration, and for the expectation of joy. Sufjan invites us to something different, something a bit more real — a chance to reflect on what really matters to us: family, health, connection, being present in the moment, even when it is uncomfortable — a strength that poetry can afford us. There will always be some attraction to the pomp and circumstance that Christmas has to offer, and we should enjoy it when we can. However, we shouldn’t ignore the rest of what is happening in our own lives and in the world we share.

Holiday feelings are complicated and messy. Poetry lends us the voice to accurately reflect them. I am challenged by Sufjan, the poet, as I annually dance with melancholy. I am often fearful as I get older, “wishing for youth,” as he says. Age can provide perspective, but it can’t make loss go away or alleviate its pain. If anything, Christmas has the potential to highlight the emptiness of loss even more. We have all collectively lost so much, whether it be a parent or family member, a beloved pet, health, a job, or even a sense of hope. The last thing we might care to do is celebrate a holiday. It’s difficult to find the words to capture how we feel, but Sufjan’s poetry might give us a verse or two.

The melancholy that Sufjan brilliantly and profoundly captures can be our reprieve when we are overwhelmed by the world. His poetry can be our prayer, if we believe in that sort of thing. We could all seek a little bit more justice for our world, a little bit more hope for ourselves, and a little bit more joy for our holiday season. Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas music can beautifully articulate whatever we might be feeling most this season. For those feeling lost or melancholic, apathetic or lonely: be baptized in the musical poem “Justice Delivers Its Gift.” If it’s not what you need right now, poetry makes a great holiday gift, one that might make the holiday season of someone you know. After all, as Mr. Keating tells his class, “Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” Sufjan, the poet, points us toward those ends. Let us embrace the beauty of life this Christmas season.

Nathan Keil is a high school English teacher, coach, and occasional writer. He enjoys hiking, watching Gonzaga basketball and Ohio State football, listening to podcasts, reading, and traveling across the country to complete his MLB bucket list. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Amber, and their dog, Marshall. Connect with him on Blue Sky @ natekeil, or Instagram @nate_keil.