If the music of Sufjan Stevens is my obsession, then his massive collection of Christmas tunes is my religion. I was not raised in a religious household, nor have I ever taken it upon myself to identify with a particular faith, but I’ve always had an affinity for Christmas and its music. For me, Christmas is not December 25th. It is not the nativity. Nor is it the act of giving and receiving gifts. I derive my greatest joy of the season from the window starting immediately after Thanksgiving dinner, to my birthday, December 29th. This is the window in which I allow myself to indulge in the excellence that is Sufjan Christmas.

I have a long and storied history with Christmas music. My family instilled in me the practice of allowing Christmas music to be played only during those few weeks mentioned above (a discipline I had to break for this essay, much to my chagrin). It keeps the music special, or in the case of Sufjan’s work, sacred. I grew up listening to the Jimmy Iovine-produced Christmas compilation albums, A Very Special Christmas, which features the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tom Petty, Run-DMC, and The Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few. Yes, they’re cheesy and over the top, but I’ll always have a nostalgic soft spot for the pop Christmas songs and their covers that get crammed into marketable compilations. It is this very commodification and corporatization of Christmas that Sufjan’s albums satirize and challenge. Songs for Christmas and, to a much greater extent, Silver and Gold venture deep into the realm of kitsch, but unlike the albums I grew up listening to, their kitschy nature is ironic; they directly critique the idea of a mass-marketed Christmas.

I have a vivid memory of my two older siblings dancing to “Christmas Unicorn,” a song forthright in its parody. I was sitting at my dining room table while the two of them, belting declarations of consumerism, jumped about in pure Christmas energy. My father and I looked on in judgment, unable to wrap our minds around the fact that anyone could enjoy a twelve and a half minute long song in which a man yells about being a “Christmas Unicorn.” We would have much preferred to listen to a Bob Seger cover of “Little Drummer Boy” (I know, I know). At the time, I was only beginning to explore Sufjan’s discography and had yet to discover any of his Christmas music. “Christmas Unicorn” is now not only one of my favorite Christmas songs by Mr. Stevens, but one of my favorite songs of his period. However, I am not here to talk about “Christmas Unicorn,” but rather his completely over-the-top, maximalist, glitch-heavy rendition of “Joy To The World” from Silver and Gold.

Found on Christmas Infinity Voyage, an EP within the greater work of Silver and Gold, “Joy To The World” is one of Sufjan’s least-digestible Christmas songs ever. As the name suggests, the EP that bears this song is full of Adzian (as in Age of Adz) soundscapes. Save for his cover of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and the warm, sentimental “Christmas in the Room,” Christmas Infinity Voyage contains half-a-dozen distorted, glitchy, and grandiose listens.

With Sufjan’s Age of Adz being my favorite album of all time, I’m much more likely to enjoy Christmas Infinity Voyage than the average Sufjan fan. I appreciate music that pushes the envelope, that challenges me. It’s not that I find the grating interlude of, say, “Particle Physics” a beautiful, or even a pleasant experience, but I love it nonetheless. Would I ever listen to it on its own? No, but that’s not its purpose. Its purpose is to add to, and build off of, the vast array of sounds found on the album. Not all of Sufjan’s music is to be understood intellectually, but emotionally. I find that I don’t necessarily listen to a song like “Particle Physics;” I feel it. The same can be said for “Joy to the World.” While the song may end in a similarly-glitchy fashion of “Particle Physics,” which it proceeds, it does not start that way.

“Joy to the World” begins in the same way that many of Sufjan’s covers do; there’s a signature twist to it. While it still retains the structure of the original song, this does not last long. Just when one thinks they’ve returned to a more stable sonic environment after “Particle Physics,” the song shifts from the ethereal vocals of a more tender Sufjan to the grandiose electronic experimentation found on Adz. The song even contains the “boy we could do much more together” refrain from the epic “Impossible Soul.” As the song progresses, there are even more shifts in style. Following the heavy dose of electronica, the song takes the listener to a spacier, more ambient style of electronic music, more akin to something off of Planetarium than The Age of Adz. Finally, the song transforms into a structureless attack on the senses, filled to the brim with various, grating noises. It feels as if the listener has entered some sort of robotic fever dream. How’s that for Christmas?

In this way, “Joy to the World” acts as a microcosm for the album as a whole. The song begins with a relatively-traditional cover and ends in an explosion of self-indulgent chaotic energy that only Sufjan Stevens can make sound exceptional. Similarly, Silver & Gold begins with a beautiful acoustic cover of “Silent Night” and closes with the twelve-minute long, dance-inducing, electronic “Christmas Unicorn.” The album, much like “Joy to the World,” meanders through different, often incongruous, styles of music and thematic elements. It’s through this amalgamation of experimental noise, parody, sentimentality, and hauntingly-beautiful songwriting that makes Silver and Gold so compelling to me. It subverts every expectation one would have surrounding a Christmas album, and the result is breathtaking. “Joy to the World,” in addition to the rest of Sufjan’s holiday portfolio, has gotten me through many cold, bitter seasons. The biting cold and the fading sun are made durable thanks to Mr. Stevens and his incredible, deeply personal, and wildly-experimental music.