Christmas Unicorn
When we started this project back in 2018, one of the things that initially drew me to the idea (other than my love for Sufjan and his Christmas tunes) is, weirdly, the math behind the site. With 100 Sufjan Christmas songs at our disposal and 25 days in an advent calendar, it meant we could conceivably cover every song over the course of four years. For those keeping up, that means we will have written about all 100 Sufjan Christmas Songs by the end of this year!
Well, that is… all but one.
During the very first year of the site, I had a few different people express interest in writing about Sufjan’s twelve-minute magnum opus “Christmas Unicorn.” Every single one of them bailed, most likely because the song itself felt too big or too complex for any one person to cover. I mean, people have literally written academic essays about the track, so it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility that it was just too large of a song to write up in a daily post within the format of this site.
So I hatched an idea.
I tucked Christmas Unicorn away until this year for the fourth and final grouping of tracks. I reached out to all my writers of Christmases past and present in a big 100-person BCC’d email chain and asked them if they’d like to say a few words on the song or their Christmas experiences.
What follows are some closing thoughts from every writer who responded to that email. Thank you for four years of Christmas wonder, it has been an honor. Here’s to you, Christmas Unicorn.
Christmas feels different every year. As a young kid, Christmas was awesome. I could ask for gifts without shame. My family and friends expected wish lists from me in the hopes of buying me whatever random stuff I was into that year. Around Christmas time, I got to see new people who wanted to know everything about me. I even got to travel and stay in hotels and see new places. It was all quite wonderful. Growing up and experiencing Christmas as a teenager, I began to notice that I was no longer the center of attention. Catching up with family was now about answering where I wanted to go to college and realizing not everyone at the Christmas party shared political views. Going to a Christmas party with family began to require a level of mental preparation, and I began to notice who did and didn’t get along. It was no longer the joyous time of being a young child at Christmas.
As an adult, Christmas has gotten both more and less complicated. On the less complicated side, I can completely choose who I spend it with and how I dedicate my time and gift hunting activities. I no longer have to rely on my parents to simply plan the holidays out for me. However, those guardrails of being a child and teenager whose parents shepherd me around and show me what they do for Christmas is sort of gone. I can do whatever I want to celebrate or (not celebrate) Christmas. And that sounds simple, because it is, but it also makes me feel like Christmas time is the perfect encapsulation of what it is like to be an adult.
Christmas is what you make of it, just like the rest of adulthood. If I didn’t want to do anything for Christmas, I could simply not set anything up and dodge the texts or calls from friends that want to see me. If I wanted to have a large gathering of friends at my apartment, I could probably do that too! Or if I choose to use Christmas as a way to reconnect with someone romantically, that would also be well within my purview. Just like adulthood, there’s no one way to do Christmas. There’s not a guidebook you can learn from, but there are templates and past experiences to lean on.
The reason I love “Christmas Unicorn” so much is because it acknowledges how up and down and sideways the holidays can be. The central part that I connect to in “Christmas Unicorn'' are the lines “I’m a frantic shopper and a brave pill popper / And they say my kind are rare.” This, combined with the massive stylistic swings throughout the song, makes me think that a message of this song is accepting that Christmas can be what you want it to be, or it can just be what it is. It can be pagan or Catholic or mythical or hysterically American or all of those things at the same time. Christmas can be whatever we want it to be, even though it probably takes some trial and error to figure out what that is.
– Grant
Christmas Unicorn, what more could possibly be said of thee? I rest in the recognition and knowing that it's alright, I love you.
– Van
Sufjan’s Christmas albums are a pastiche of influences new and old, sacred and profane, silly and serious, and the epic “Christmas Unicorn” is no exception. The titular beast is itself a mashup of holiday excess; it is at once magical and pathological. But, the most important turn of the song happens a few minutes in when Sufjan turns the lens back on us: “You may dress in the human uniform, child / But I know you’re just like me.” This year, I’m taking Sufjan’s invitation to revel in the season with all of my heart. We are all Christmas Unicorns.
– Paul McKean
I used to not think much of “Christmas Unicorn.” It was just one of 100 tracks, one of the psychedelic and frankly skippable entries in a vast collection that ranges from earnest and straightforward to, well, Christmas Unicorn. It’s not one that you put on the ‘Sufjan Christmas for non-Sufjan fans’ playlist.
But then I left my faith. It was a carefully considered decision, but still a painful one. To walk away from the capital C ‘Church’ after nearly four decades . . . there’s a grief there. It’s allowing a new perspective but giving up on a lot.
As Tim Minchin so eloquently put it, I still really like Christmas. Absent the religious aspect; there’s still the family gatherings, the shopping, the music, and the general good holiday mood that everyone is in. So, how does one stay engaged with Christmas without necessarily going all out for the ‘Christ’ part?
Well, zoom out a bit on both Christmas itself and Christmas Unicorn. Because Christmas is a unicorn. It’s putting a horn on a horse and making something both real and not real. It’s a holiday that is observed in December, though December 25th was almost definitely not Jesus’s birthday. It’s the birth of Christ, but also Santa Claus. It’s the three kings, but also Rudolph. It’s advent, but also Black Friday shopping. It’s a unicorn.
And so is the song, starting slow and ramping up into a mad, rollicking “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Just as Christmas started simply and has become this insistent, all-encompassing, ignore-it-at-your-own-peril observance. It’s fun...?
So now I just enjoy the unicorn. All of it. The sacred and the secular, the Santa and the Christ child. It’s fun, and it’s supposed to be fun. It’s all Christmas; it’s all the unicorn, both real and not real.
We are all the unicorn. Merry Christmas.
– Turner Walston
I like to imagine Ian Curtis listening to this song. I’m sure he would’ve hated it, but it’s a funny mental image. Imagine devoting your short life to making the most haunted, thanatopic music in existence, and then 40 years later, someone takes your most famous song and turns it into this upbeat, incredible ode to… I mean… it’s impossible even to sum up, really. It’s like a tumbling frenzy of Christmas pathos, an extraordinary firework that bursts again and again.
I don’t know, maybe he would’ve liked it after all.
– Kit Riemer
Christmas Unicorn takes me to where Part 4 of Sufjan’s twenty-five-minute epic, “Impossible Soul,” takes me, but dawning tinsel, string lights, and your favorite ugly Christmas sweater. It’s exactly the chaotic finality of all 100 Christmas songs I would expect from a post-Age of Adz Sufjan Stevens to conclude Silver & Gold with.
– Mal Burns
When it comes to Christmas music, Sufjan is the unicorn. What I've always loved about these records is that it's not a record of overdone covers. He does some traditional tunes, but otherwise, he's giving us new songs about the season, the holiday, and its religious and capitalistic over/undertones.
– Anonymous
When I wrote about “Get Behind Me, Santa” for the first year of Sufjan Christmas, I never guessed I’d still be around to see it completed. But now, here I am, despite coming dangerously close to not making it, I’m still here kicking around, even though it’s tough. To all the people out there who are struggling with suicidality, I suppose there’s only one thing I can say: It’s alright. I love you.
– Amber Graci
When I was at university, I had two loves. On one hand, recently developed was a suddenly overwhelming obsession with late 70s post-punk band Joy Division. I’d never encountered them before a new flatmate in our university halls played them pretty much constantly. I enquired as to this pulsating bass and macabre vocals to find out they were the iconic short-lived tragic band responsible for “Atmosphere” and “Transmission.” We watched Control together regularly. I demanded DJs play them at every indie club night we went to. I even took a date to see the Joy Division doc, but her boredom compelled me to abandon the date shortly after the end to meet my friend in the lobby to help steal a film poster from the cinema. I still love Joy Division.
I also loved Xmas, but this was a more deep-rooted childhood family thing. My mother and grandmother smother their house during the latter months of the year with decorations. I maintained my childish ecstatic joy with the season despite my changing teenage style. Band t-shirts or blazers-over-polos (early 2000s fashion everyone…) were happily replaced with the cheesiest Xmas jumpers. I spread festive feels like an infection to my hallmates. Tinsel hung in my room throughout the year along with a mini Xmas tree, either amusing or terrifying any girl I might be super lucky enough to invite back to my room for drinks and canoodling. I got a Christmas tattoo. I run a Christmas podcast all year round. My now-wife has to stop me from talking about it outside of the season with her. I still love Christmas.
Cut to a year after leaving university, and my musical tastes have grown and shifted in many interesting ways, including finding out about this guy called Sufjan Stevens, whose music is a new wonderful soundtrack to my life. And what do you know, he makes Christmas music too?! But it all truly culminates in 2012, swirling together like separate strands in an entwining storyline. A track called Christmas Unicorn appeared out of the mists of Sufjan’s newest festive release, and I put it on, commuting to work one morning, to see what has been offered forth now. It’s over 12 minutes long, and it starts like a fairy tale story, weaving in and out of madness, medieval vibes, and that sublime, transcendent quality Sufjan brings to things. It’s intriguing but odd. Then it starts breaking up and breaking down, spiraling its way towards something special. And then, after eight minutes of hypnotic music, it begins. Worlds colliding. Stars fusing. Universes bonding. Love will tear us apart. Christmas. Joy Division. And slap bang in the middle – Sufjan with a goddamn banger about a Unicorn.
– Adam Parker Sibun - Merry Britsmas
It’s been another year, and we’re all still here and still kicking it, I hope. No matter the circumstances you have during the holiday season, I think “Christmas Unicorn” makes room for it - the loud, the chaos, the big, the beautiful, and the ugly. It’s all the weird, difficult, good things about Christmas turned up to 11. Put it on, listen to it with headphones, or blast it and scream “You’re the Christmas Unicorn” at your neighbours. Whatever the case, I hope you know that, it is alright, I love you. You’ve got this. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, my fellow Christmas unicorns.
– Jocelyn Au-Yeung
– Benny VanDerburgh
Great memories of listening to this song on my buddy’s couch while playing Call of Duty and eating Doritos when we were maybe 15. Odd memory to associate with this, but a great one. I always sucked at Call of Duty and still do, and this song will always be a reminder of that. Damn you!
– Matty G Herring
If you start playing this song at 11:53:33pm on New Year's Eve, 2022 will begin with the Christmas Unicorn drum fill. Some other things might happen too… perhaps you will sprout a unicorn horn or develop a sudden affinity for the sublime. Who knows? The world is abundant, you never know until you try!
-Nick Webber
Since Christmas-themed music and movies made for queer audiences are so few and far between, ambiguously queer songs like Sufjan Stevens’s “Christmas Unicorn” feel extra precious during the holiday season. In this song, Stevens combats traditional ideals, capitalistic tendencies, and religiously imposed shame while shining beautiful rainbow (or bisexual, or transgender, or any colorful combination of LGBTQ+ pride) lights on those of us who are typically erased from Christmas stories. In other words, Sufjan manages to queerify a traditionally heteronormative holiday with much-needed representation in this song. The epic 12+ minute tune embraces, uplifts, and makes “no full apology” for the “mystical apostasy” that is all of us Christmas unicorns. Although mainstream holiday entertainment often erases queer people from the narrative like we “don’t exist,” Sufjan reminds us that we can be unapologetically ourselves despite this and that “it’s all right, I love you.”
Thank you Santa Sufjan for making Christmas queerer.
– Emily Csuy
In my first year writing for this site, I wrote a rather lengthy piece about the cynicism wrought by the over-commercialization of Christmas (which can be found here). I looked at Sufjan’s Christmas music as an exploration and reaction against this cynicism. What I find interesting about “Christmas Unicorn” is that it offers an answer to Christmas cynicism that is almost completely opposed to the answer Sufjan gives on an earlier track: “Christmas in the Room.”
On “Christmas in the Room,” Sufjan and his partner find joy in the holiday through the total rejection of all of the things traditionally associated with Christmas. “No travel bags, no shopping malls/No candy canes, no Santa Claus” or, in other words, Christmas is “just an ordinary day.” Here it seems that Sufjan thinks that all of these things, from mistletoes, to Christmas trees, to presents and candy canes, are things that we ought to reject in order to enjoy an authentic moment with our loved ones. It’s as though he’s saying that the only way to preserve the spirit of the holiday is to paradoxically reject it entirely.
“Christmas Unicorn” takes us to the other end of the spectrum. It’s a song that revels in excess as it describes a chimerical Christmas being with mistletoes on its nose, a bow-tie on its chin, and a credit card on its wrist. Before the song turns into a Joy Division cover, Sufjan sings the essential lyric: “For you're a Christmas unicorn, I have seen you on the beat/You may dress in the human uniform, child/But I know you're just like me” Here Sufjan indicates that the best response to this mythical mess of a holiday is to stop pretending that you don’t love it and simply embrace the excess. Sing the worst Christmas songs, watch the cheesiest Christmas movies, and cover your apartment with lights and wreaths and mistletoe. Stop being the curmudgeon who complains that all of the stores are playing the same songs over and over again and just sing along.
These are two radically different responses to the bastardization of a traditional religious holiday by consumer capitalism. The fact that they appear on the same box set makes me think that Sufjan believes the right response is somewhere in between. You don’t need to tear down all of your Christmas lights to be “authentic,” but never forget that what really makes the holiday special is not the decorations or the songs or the traditions but rather the people you share them with.
– Kevin Johnson
CHRISTMAS UNICORN
I’m a Christmas Unicorn. You’re a Christmas Unicorn.
Who hasn’t had a Christmas Unicorn?
The American Christmas Myth, a true Fantasy.
Which time of year exudes more need for adoration and affection than December’s end?
Warmth.
Likely a lover.
Maybe a sister, brother, mother, friend, or father?
The fantasy of the Holiday with our Unicorn.
Is it the Unicorn themselves or the Fantasy version?
Have you had your Christmas Unicorn?
Are you still searching?
Faults and all.
I’m a Christmas Unicorn.
You’re the Christmas Unicorn too.
For Christmas, perfection?
Bliss?
Mythical.
Fantastical.
– Theodore Smyk
I’m about to do what no Sufjan follower or lover would dare - disagree. Between the tantalizing, convicting, and frankly, silly lyrics of “Christmas Unicorn” sits one message. It takes its place in the corner, mouth open, begging for a chance at the spotlight. After an ecstatic 8 minutes and 35 seconds, this concept, this idea, this lie is struck with the shine of Stevens’ vocals. It’s aglow with bells, whistles, tinsel, and a gorgeous Sufjan-style-Adz major tonality.
Love will tear us apart.
I couldn’t disagree more. Humans just aren’t loving right.
– Jemima Moore
I love all types of Christmases: kid-centric, Santa-based Christmas, the secular version of the holiday where I meet up with friends at pop-up bars in Brooklyn and talk over mulled wine, the pagan traditions that show up in holly, evergreen boughs, and mistletoe, Christmas Eve Mass, last-minute shopping—I genuinely love all of it. Maybe this is why I consider Sufjan Stevens’ maximalist masterpiece “Christmas Unicorn” the greatest expression of the holiday.
Stevens casts the “Christmas Unicorn” as a complicated mythical symbol that stands in opposition to itself—both a critique of capitalistic Xmas Xcess and a celebration of the joy of the holiday.
“...Oh, I'm a mystical apostasy, I'm a horse with a fantasy twist.
Though I play all night with my magical kite, people say I don't exist.
For I make no full apology for the category I reside.
I'm a mythical mess with a treasury chest, I'm a construct of your mind.
Oh, I'm hysterically American, I've a credit card on my wrist.
And I have no home or a field to roam, I will curse you with my kiss.”
It would be easy to decry the commercialism of Christmas, but go too far in that direction, and you lose the gifts and the tinsel and the pop-up bars. It would be easy to want to fully secularize the holiday, but do that, and you lose Christmas Mass and Linus’ monologue. “Christmas Unicorn” combines both extremes, plus all the shades of red and green in between, and celebrates the tension.
And then he invites us all into it. “You’re the Christmas Unicorn too—it’s all right, I love you.”
And as if that wasn’t enough? “Christmas Unicorn” is queer. Making a unicorn the star of the holiday is queer. The clips of live performances are queer. I’m not saying Stevens is—I don’t know him, and it’s none of my business anyway—but the song is, in that glorious sense of taking something and making it weird and subversive and inclusive.
And then having created the greatest possible symbol for queer kids and goth kids and weird kids or really anyone else who isn’t welcome in their birth family’s holiday celebration, or who might feel alienated from it, or grit their teeth to get through it, he ricochets into Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart Again.” Because after all, what is the best summation of Christmas? Love tears us apart if we have happy families. It tears us apart if we have to separate ourselves from a family that can’t accept us. Love quite literally tore Jesus apart, if you want to think of it that way. Steven uses the Great Goth Anthem as an exclamation point for his creation of a new holiday icon, a rallying cry for anyone who feels lost and lonely on December 25th, and, somehow, as a shocking, brutal expression of one of the True Meanings of Christmas.
Plus, who doesn’t want an excuse to dance your fucking heart out on Christmas?
– Leah
While there’s always a first for everything, I wasn’t quite expecting the beginning of Sufjan’s “Christmas Unicorn” to feel as cynical as it did the first time I heard it. Granted, the light-hearted jabs at how the sacred holiday season is also the most commercialized time of the year are what I expect from someone with as much hipster cred as Sufjan. But after listening to the other 99 songs he recorded about Christmas prior to listening to this one, and how they come off as a genuine tribute to this time of year, I just wasn’t expecting the level of cynicism in the beginning few stanzas.
But fear not, my heart, for as the song continues, Sufjan doesn’t leave us in the cold, cynical winter of criticism. What transpires after the opening verses is a radical acceptance of everything Christmas is, all the good and all the bad. And it’s a radical acceptance of ourselves, knowing full well we too are the Christmas Unicorn with a credit card on our wrists. And it’s a radical acceptance that all the others around us are also Christmas Unicorns and that ultimately there is just Love between us, knowing full well our true character and our true flaws.
At the end of 100 songs chronicling the different shades and hues of the season, a range of emotions as deep as the sea and as vast as the sky, we are left with one final metaphor from Sufjan: The Christmas Unicorn. After a few years of contemplating Sufjan’s work and our shared holiday season, I’ve come to the opinion that the Christmas Unicorn encapsulates much of how I see Christmas. It’s deeply mystical yet highly commercialized. It is at once both ancient and contemporary. It is radical acceptance of what is, of who we are, and everyone around us.
– Justin Zarb
I don’t know what I could say that the others here haven’t said already. I’ll just say that I’d put “I’m hysterically American / I’ve a credit card on my wrist” in my top 3 favorite lyrics of the decade tbh, and that I make it a weird little goal every year to sing through the entire first part of the song perfectly in my car at least once before Christmas.
– Hunter P.
Christmas Unicorn is a celebration of every part of Christmas, a fitting finale to ten wild and eclectic Christmas albums. It’s a reminder of the depth and complexity of Christmas, and an appreciation of the many different aspects of the holiday season. Christmas means something different to everyone, and we all celebrate Christmas in our own unique way.
I can’t imagine this will be the easiest Christmas for many this year, myself included. I hope you’ll remember to look after your friends and families this season, I’ve often found love can be equally good at bringing us together as it is at tearing us apart.
Whatever Christmas means to you, I hope it is special. I hope you can spend it with whoever is important to you. And above all, always remember, it’s alright, I love you.
I wish you all the best.
– Connor Maeson
I took a walk yesterday after dinner. It was quiet, dark, cold, and a little rainy outside. Horrible conditions for most evenings, but it’s worth it to see the rows of otherwise nondescript houses in my suburban neighborhood alight with tacky, worn-out, yet warm Christmas decorations. Mike Wazowski with a Santa hat. A ten-foot-tall inflatable snowman. Colorful string lights lining the garage. It’s the same decorations the neighbors have been putting up every year. Some of the cut-outs are faded, and some of the string light bulbs are out, but they’re up there anyways. Just because.
That’s kind of how this entire season feels like for me these days. It’s the end of another incredibly dark year, and I’m kind of just floating around, trying to figure out my place in whatever this new world is. And every December, on cue, I found myself going through the same tired traditions: shopping for secret Santa gifts at strip malls, listening to the local radio station’s Christmas playlist that’s never changed, making sugar cookies, and listening to the pastor’s copy-pasted Christmas message. I’ve done it all before, nothing ever really changes, yet I keep coming back to it. It’s just kind of nice to have the overproduced, manufactured, tacky, worn-out, yet warm traditions come back into my life every 12 months. Just because.
Have a wonderful Christmas.
– Jon C