Imagine yourself looking out of the window during a night in December. You lean your forehead on the glass pane, and you can feel the terrible cold outside. You try to look out for anything, anyone, but everything is dark. All you can see is the snowstorm silently raging from heaven to earth, white specks spiraling around on a black, starless background. The fireplace is lit, but this is not the romantic image of a yuletide evening you are used to seeing in films: one side of you is getting roasted by the unshielded fire, and the other side is chilly. An enormous wave of sadness overwhelms you. This year is gone, and with it, all the happy things you used to take for granted. The future has many surprises in store, but all you can think of right now is what you just lost. And you feel like a speck of snow aimlessly drifting around, held aloft by the wind, never knowing where you are going to land, or when.

I first discovered Sufjan Stevens in early 2016. I had just begun university, survived a particularly stressful first session of exams, and was already coming off a rough previous year. Hoping to find some new music to distract myself, I decided to check out this unusually-named indie musician who kept popping up on Spotify. Unbeknownst to me, I had even rougher times ahead of me, but I managed to get through them thanks to (what some might call unhealthy amounts of) beautiful music.

Fast forward to Christmastime of that same year, Sufjan had since climbed the ranks of my favorite musicians, and “Chicago” became required daily listening. Riding the train home for vacation, I put Silver & Gold on shuffle to get myself into the festive mood. I heard a few tracks without much attention, but then I remember listening to “Barcarola,” “Christmas in the Room,” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and suddenly, the atmosphere became wistful. Soon I would have been sitting at the table with my family. It was Christmas. Would there be snow this year?

My family didn’t necessarily have a massive gathering on Christmas day; in fact, they actually tended to be uncharacteristically small for the area. Two parents, four grandparents, an aunt and uncle, a younger brother, and myself: twelve of us in total, all spending the day together in one of our homes. We broke out the expensive chinaware, laid the table in the living room, lit the candles, and ate lots of fancy stuff, always starting with the home-made liver pâté.

As time went on, the number of guests sitting around the table began to dwindle. The first one to go was my paternal grandfather when I was nine or so. Then my parents divorced, and the reason for one big Christmas gathering became void – the new tradition was lunch with mom’s side of the family and dinner with dad’s, or vice versa. In 2015, the aforementioned particularly-stressful year, I lost both my uncle and my other grandfather to cancer. The latter’s death struck a severe blow to her wife Anna, quickening her descent into dementia and necessitating her permanent hospitalization into a nursing home.

What was left of our Christmas meals? At this point there were no extraordinary guests, no extended family coming together once a year. We were the same people who lived in the same house all around the calendar year. The only difference was the fact that we were now eating fancy food on expensive chinaware. No longer a dozen. No longer gathering.

Now, I have a penchant for dramatics, and I might have just made my family’s history sound more tragic than it truly is. The death of my relatives marked some hard times for everyone, and my grandma’s illness as well, but life goes on. In fact, there is another, possibly funny aside to this tale of family and loss. Another disappearance from our Christmas meals, one I omitted in the paragraphs above: not because some overwhelming grief made me erase it from memory, but because it was so unnoticed that I feel genuinely curious about the fate of the missing guest.

In a sense, there were actually thirteen of us. I’m saying “in a sense” because the thirteenth guest wasn’t human – it wasn’t even a living being to be fair, though made in the shape of one. This mechanical abomination didn’t eat our liver pâté and stood still on the coffee table, but it was always with us on Christmas Day no matter which home was hosting us. He was silent until someone caught its eyes, at which time it started to wail in a grotesque imitation of Christmas carollers. Us being innocent children, my brother and I found it amusing, but looking back on my past, I wouldn’t let such a creature put foot – or root? – into my home ever again. It went away as silently as it came: was it for the best? Probably yes. I would have hated that thing if it were still here, and that’s why I want to know where it ended up. But more on that later.

***

Most people seem to know Sufjan as “the sad guy with the banjo.” While that’s not entirely true (The Age of Adz, for your consideration), it’s a reputation he has rightfully earned. That time on the train when Spotify chose to play “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” I remember remarking just how sad this guy could be. His cover is a far cry from Sinatra’s usual big band fare, Dean Martin’s waltzy classic, or even Michael Bublé’s mall-friendly version. Instead, it starts with a hushed background vocal, one that brings to mind the howl of a winter snowstorm. The plucked guitar, Sufjan’s low, breathy voice, and the accompanying female vocalist all set the tone: we’re in some house, a mountain cabin even, and outside it’s cold, very cold. No one wouldn’t even think about heading out, not in this weather. But nobody would stay all night sitting idly by in some darkened room, either: so, to kill some time, someone has whipped out their guitar and started to sing trite Christmas covers. The heat from the fireplace feels lovely, but the logs are burning fast and everyone is becoming a little sleepy. The inevitability of leaving looms above this circle of friends, and even Sufjan’s vocals, imploring people not to go away, sound tired and resigned. How long will he, or the fire, last?

Then, a drum hits. “When we finally kiss goodnight –” And some Christmas bells too. “– how I’ll hate going out in the storm.” You have to leave. The rest of your life awaits you far away from this secluded cabin, beyond the snow. Please carry a memory of me in your heart – “but if you’ll really hold me tight, all the way home I’ll be warm” – so that it might help you in your journey home. At the end of the song, someone has, at last, opened the door and a gust of gelid wind traverses the room: the supporting vocalist sings longer, sharper, vibrato notes. You make the first steps in the whirling darkness, cold wet specks needle your exposed skin, and all you can see is snow. Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.

It’s surprising how Sufjan managed to take an old, predictable song and turn the meaning on its head, or at least bring out another side of the story. Let it snow so that we will stay here a little longer, all together. The more snow it falls, the more people will be discouraged from leaving. But life conspires against us, the fire is starting to die, and all the excuses have come undone. We can drag this thing out at the moment of the goodbyes, slowly inching towards the door but too afraid to take action and turn the doorknob, but for how long? And how long until I can see you in person, instead of holding on to a memory of you?

Let’s all meet again a year from now, in this same cabin, and please be safe while crossing the snowstorm. But not all of us will make it. Some this year, some the next year, we will all fall and be blanketed in white snow, until the people sitting in front of the fire will all be similar, but different from the ones who sat there before.

***

I never knew that “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” had a music video, until recently, when I accidentally came across it in my YouTube recommendations. Imagine my surprise when I saw it – finding in it some lost memory that other viewers did not share. It’s a close up of two eyes and a lipless mouth, amidst plastic fir needles, distorted by contrasting green and red Christmas lights. The face blinks and moves its mouth, completely out of sync with Sufjan’s soft vocals. I immediately knew what it was – the missing thirteenth guest.

A fake, singing Christmas tree, no more than half a meter tall. Standing on the coffee table, it had a motion sensor that detected when someone was in front of him, at which point it blared a crackly version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” even more out of sync than in the video. For some reason, I found it amusing and my brother did too. Only now do I understand why the adults were wary of it. It’s honestly creepy, especially in close-up.

Seeing this mechanical monstrosity as the backdrop for an incredibly sad song, I thought again about it, how it disappeared from our Christmases and how my relatives did the same. Can I say that I miss that thing? Even if only in a neutral sense, I do miss it, because I had it then and now I don’t. I can only be grateful that my memories of it are positive ones since it disappeared before I could realize its eeriness. And it’s somewhat pointless to speculate whether I would be unnerved if I still it – because I don’t have it, I lost it, and I will never have it back.

It’s absolutely true that you never realize something, or someone, is missing until you look back. They have fallen off the train without a sound: when you see the seats they left empty, it’s already too late. And for each one who leaves, you’ll be a little less warm when you eventually have to cross the snowstorm yourself.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”