There are a handful of songs that I hold very dear for their uncanny ability to quiet my thoughts and revive me in the moments I feel faint. Sufjan Stevens’s rendition of “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming” is one of those songs. As soon as I hear the guitar and banjo plucking that pastoral tune, I am immediately in a better place.

Sacred Christmas music elicits a whole host of memories and emotions for me. Although I was raised in church, my relationship to the religious side of Christmas is a bit unorthodox. I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical church in Montana, and while I look back on this time fondly, my denomination didn’t celebrate any Christian holidays.

As far as I could tell, we didn’t celebrate these holy days because the Bible didn't explicitly command them; they had pagan origins. We didn’t have a special Easter celebration. Any newcomers visiting our church for the traditional Christmas service would’ve been disappointed to find a desolate, snow-capped steeple with the lights off and nobody home (unless the 25th happened to fall on a Sunday, when the preacher would be obligated to say, “Now SOME people choose to celebrate this day as Christ’s birthday, and that’s not a bad thing. But we should celebrate Christ EVERY day.”)

Ever the iconoclast, I remember lecturing my bewildered fourth-grade peers with great zeal, telling them that Jesus was most likely not born on the 25th of December and that celebrating his birthday on a certain day is unhistorical and arbitrary. Side note: I have always been really fun at parties.

Of course, my family and I still celebrated Christmas in our own way. Jesus was always a part of it. And it was always special and beautiful and holy. Familial warmth, Christmas goodies, carols, prayer, old decorations, and Santa Claus all swirled together to create a nutmeggy Yuletide concoction of epic proportions. I adored it. It was my favorite time of the year.

As I grew older, so grew my proclivity to overthink things. These days, it’s tough for me to make sense of this Christ-haunted holiday. I attend an Anglican church, and every time Advent comes around, I struggle to categorize Christmas and its seemingly disparate elements, its bizarre blend of the holy and the profane. Is it more characterized by rampant consumerism or generosity? Is it about the Christ child? Is it a veritable smorgasbord of trite sentimentality? What are we to make of this holiday season? The magic and wonder that I felt so strongly as a child has waned.

When I listen to “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming,” I rediscover that wonder. When God seems silent and cold, this song comforts me, gently shattering my pretense and cynicism. For a little more than 3 minutes, I can shed my cognitive dissonance and step into a place of peace and spaciousness.

The imagery of the song’s ancient text draws from Messianic prophecies recorded in Isaiah Chapter 11: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The “Rose e’er blooming” refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the chosen bearer of the Mystery. I love that the long-awaited fulfillment of these prophecies is described in such modest language: “It came, a flower bright / Amid the cold of winter.” The miracle of the Incarnation is encapsulated in the poignant, fragile beauty of a budding flower.

And then comes the twist ending to the story of redemption: “To show God’s love aright / She bore to us a Savior / When half spent was the night.” When the second syllable of “Savior” is sung, a borrowed chord is employed, which swaps the expected minor chord with a major chord and gives the cadence a surprising, optimistic lift, a lovely instance of text-painting that mirrors the unexpected, undeserved gift of divine intervention.

My favorite part of Sufjan’s version is the many instances of caesura, the prolonged pauses which give the song its lilting, pensive quality. In these pauses, I feel space to breathe. This song gives me permission to slow down and rest in the tension of my ever-shifting faith and the utter patchwork wackiness of the Christmas season. When I listen to this song, I no longer feel a need to reconcile all of the competing narratives in my head. I can simply listen to the words that were penned centuries before stocking stuffers and weird stop motion TV specials and just be still.

And when I listen to this song, it’s all sacred. Everything is sacred; the tree, the laughter, the blinking lights, the liturgy, all of it. I am a child. And if even for just a moment, I can say that I believe.

He came like a little flower in the middle of a cold, cold winter.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah.