Only At Christmas Time

Sufjan Stevens

Very few artists have developed and executed their very own sound — where you see their fingerprints and feel their DNA in the recordings and compositions. Where no one else could’ve written them. Sufjan is one of those artists, with mind-blowing songs and records over decades. Risk-taking, genre-bending releases, with a signature sound and exquisite craft.

So many SS favorites were left unchosen this past year, but I did write about these four:

Tonya Harding (in D major)
Romulus
To Be Alone With You
Rake (Greenpoint Version)

A bit like Stephin Merritt, Sufjan Stevens can write a whole lot of songs in short order, comparatively. And he’s also written some of the best Christmas songs in the past twenty years.

This one has a familiar Sufjan guitar and tempo. The lyrics are honest, iconic, but also ironic. The peace and joy we long for at Christmas? It takes the end of time / It takes a long long time.

The peace that passes comprehension always eludes us. But if we’re lucky, sometimes during certain moments of our holiday seasons and family get-togethers, we glimpse what it might feel like.

Only to bring you peace
Only at Christmas time
Only the King of kings
Only what once was mine
It takes the end of time
It takes a long long time
Only one thought of mine
Only at Christmas time

He brings us peace
He brings us joy
He brings all thoughts to destroy
Only at Christmas time

To bring us peace
To bring us joy
To bring all thoughts to destroy
Only at Christmas time

Only at Christmas time
Only a tree to climb
Only at Christmas time
If you can read the sign
Only at Christmas time
Everything lost will find
Only at Christmas time
Only at Christmas time