Sufjan Stevens Turns His Homemade Christmas Gifts Into One Record
Worst Christmas Ever!, a 16-track collection of Sufjan Stevens’s Christmas recordings, is out on 6 November through his own label, Asthmatic Kitty. It is a single record. Fifteen of its songs come from more than 100 Christmas recordings spread across two box sets. The sixteenth, “On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better)”, has not been heard before.
Until now, the box sets were the only way to own most of this material. RELEVANT notes that this is the first time the holiday songs have been gathered onto one album. The record was announced on 18 September and arrives seven weeks before Christmas.
Five Hours of Songs That Started as Gifts
The project began in 2001. Stevens made Christmas songs as presents for friends and family, with no plan beyond that. The announcement for the record describes a method that barely changed over the years. He set aside one week in December, usually at home. He recorded with whoever was around: friends, roommates, other musicians.
The habit stuck. What started as a few gifts grew into a catalogue that now runs to nearly five hours of Christmas music. In 2006 Asthmatic Kitty collected the first five volumes as Songs for Christmas, Vols. 1-5. In 2012 it followed with Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas, Vols. 6-10, which gathered five more EPs recorded between 2006 and 2010.
Those two sets are where the new record draws from. Together they hold more than 100 recordings, according to Jambands. Worst Christmas Ever! keeps fifteen of them.
The label’s own biography treats the box sets as part of the main body of work, not a side project. It lists them alongside the state records Michigan and Illinois as examples of Stevens’s taste for big concepts.
What Made the Cut
The fifteen split into two kinds of song. Some are Stevens originals, including the ones the label calls perennial fan favourites: “Sister Winter”, “Put the Lights on the Tree”, “Only at Christmas Time” and the title track, “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!”, a 2006 song. “Christmas in the Room” and “Justice Delivers Its Gift” are here too.
The rest are standards and hymns in his own arrangements. “Silent Night” opens the record. “Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Joy to the World”, “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “Sleigh Ride” follow at intervals. “Auld Lang Syne” covers New Year’s Eve. “Maoz Tzur (Rock of Ages)”, a Hanukkah song, closes the set.
One choice stands out on the tracklist. “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” appears twice, in two different arrangements: the Christmas Infinity Voyage version at track five and the Christmas Unicorn version at track eleven. A compilation chasing variety would have picked one. This one keeps both.
Sufjan Stevens has been open about how loosely he treats the form. Speaking to Vulture in 2022, he said Christmas culture comes with no rules or regulations, as The Line of Best Fit recalled. The label frames the catalogue the same way: reverent and rebellious at once, with Christmas music treated as both sacred and secular. The tracklist bears that out, putting hymns, a Hanukkah song, pop standards and his own songs side by side.
The One New Song
The sixteenth track is “On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better)”. It sits at track eight, near the middle of the record. The label describes it as previously unheard.
RELEVANT reports that it is his first original Christmas song since the last volume in 2012. Retail notes for the UK pressing put the gap at nearly fifteen years. Either way, it is the first new entry in the catalogue in a long time, and it arrives on a record built mostly from old ones.
The song also comes on a limited 7-inch single with preorders of the album. Asthmatic Kitty is pairing that 7-inch with its own exclusive pressing of the record.
For listeners who already own both box sets, that is the point of interest. The other fifteen songs are drawn from records they have. The new one is the only music here they will not already know.
The Players Behind the Volumes
The volumes were never solo records. Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National played on them, as did Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. So did Cat Martino, Gabriel Kahane, Casey Foubert, James McAlister, Rosie Thomas, Marla Hansen, Olivier Manchon and Sebastian Krueger. Daniel, Elin, Lilly and Ida Smith of Danielson are credited as well.
The method explains the roll call. A week at home with whoever was around meant the records were made by friends, roommates and peers rather than a fixed band. It is close to how many self-releasing artists work now, at home and with friends, except that the label putting it out is his own.
How the Record Is Being Released
The release is a case study in format planning. Asthmatic Kitty’s own shop has an exclusive pressing on what it calls Candy Cane vinyl, sold with the limited 7-inch. The album is also out on CD and cassette, with merchandise alongside.
Other variants are spread across retailers. Rough Trade has its own exclusive. There is a limited Dinked International Edition LP, listed by Chicago’s Reckless Records. In the UK and Europe, the 16-track LP is pressed on red vinyl, according to RareVinyl.com.
Stevens had a hand in the packaging. The cover is a collage by Ben Giles, with layout and design by Stevens himself, Exclaim reported. The label also put out a product video showing the formats ahead of release.
An Artist Who Usually Works in Volumes
Long, multi-part releases are a habit for Sufjan Stevens, which is what makes a single record unusual. The Christmas songs came out as ten volumes across two box sets. In early 2021 he released Convocations, a five-volume requiem mass that runs to two and a half hours, according to his label’s biography.
The same biography shows his Christmas collaborators turning up elsewhere in his work. Bryce Dessner and James McAlister, both credited on the Christmas volumes, made Planetarium with him and Nico Muhly. That record came out in 2017.
Against that output, Worst Christmas Ever! is compact: one record, sixteen songs, one of them new. Denny Renshaw shot the press photos for it, which put Stevens in a Christmas jumper under red and green light.
A Label Working Through Its Catalogue
Worst Christmas Ever! follows another catalogue release from the label. On 30 May 2025, Asthmatic Kitty marked ten years of Carrie & Lowell with a double LP that added seven unreleased demos, a 40-page art book and a new essay. His tenth solo studio project, Javelin, came out in October 2023.
Both releases treat older material as something to repackage with care rather than reissue as it was. The Carrie & Lowell set added unheard demos. The Christmas set adds an unheard song and cuts nearly five hours down to one record.
IndieMusic.News’s curator team:
Box sets reward the completist and lose everyone else. A single record works the other way: it is a way in. Our tip is to play the two versions of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”, tracks five and eleven, back to back before anything else. The same hymn in two arrangements says more about how open these December sessions were than any description of them.
For another catalogue release built around songs nobody had heard, read how Iron & Wine added four unreleased songs to Hen’s Teeth. Worst Christmas Ever! is out on 6 November.
