One of the greatest gifts Sufjan Stevens gave the music world was permission to hold the sacredness and the silliness of Christmas in equal measure. In the CCM circuit, this remains a rare approach with artists dutifully churning out over-produced and overly saccharine meditations on Christ’s coming that try their absolute best to avoid all of the human messiness that’s gotten tangled up in the celebration along the way. On his latest album “Saving Christmas,” indie pop rapper Shawn Seguin embraces Sufjan’s challenge by leaning so fully into the messiness of it all you can’t help but see it all as a bit silly – and perhaps a bit beautiful because of it.
When you first hear his style, a listener may be tempted to compare Shawn to the great Saturday Night Live “f-rappers” The Lonely Island. But while Shawn’s album is crammed full of funny songs, there’s not a single joke on here that doesn’t seem to have a sincere foundation. When he’s rapping furiously about his love for the Home Alone movies you understand that it’s completely driven by a nostalgic desperation for his youthful innocence, not simply that’s fun to make fun of the terrible 6th (!) entry. Or when he’s proposing a marriage to the Queen of Christmas, Mariah Carey, you hear an impassioned plea to keep the joyful dream of the holiday intact despite itself. But, ok, maybe the love song for Christmas cookies isn’t much deeper than that.
I want to highlight the two stand out tracks especially. Although we’re now on the other end of the election, we all know that the fall out will continue to reverberate through this holiday and probably the next few to boot. The album opens on a rather bleak – but honest! – note with “Christmas is Ruined,” a track that bluntly asks us to face the absurdity of celebrating Christmas together after all of this time drifting politically further and further apart. I particularly appreciate this song because it offers little in the way of a solution because we haven’t yet faced how ridiculous this mess really is. Maybe the love of Christmas can bring us together?
The second song is perhaps a little less serious, but it deserves a mention because it’s just a truly phenomenal song – best of the record, even. “Holiday Hustle” is an ode to every overly exhausted parent just trying to keep their shit together long enough for the holiday to go off without a hitch. The racing electronic bounce of the music is matched perfectly by the verbal dexterity of Shawn’s rhymes, a real showcase of his talent as a songwriter. An incredibly infectious tune.
Although Shawn has a long history of producing more decidedly Christian music, this album surprisingly stays away from the “meaning of the season” in a religious sense. Instead, in all of its silly sincerity it asks the listener to consider what it is we’re even doing with all of the movies, music, presents, and pretense that we cram into the last few weeks of every year. It’s an album that can be played for the kids while also giving the parents something to contemplate in between wrapping presents and watching “Elf” for the 10th time in as many days. And like all things Christmas, its fun to get lost in its bright fleeting delights.