Over the years, Sufjan Stevens has gifted us with an incredible selection of holiday music. His catalog boasts over 100 holiday-themed songs, as well as box sets like Songs For Christmas and Silver & Gold. Despite having a robust discography with holiday songs, Stevens admitted in an interview with Vulture that Christmas actually isn’t his favorite holiday.
He shared that his favorite holiday is actually Fourth Of July, though not for any patriotic reasons.
“My birthday is July 1, and I am a pyromaniac. I love fireworks,” he said. “Every year, I drive to Pennsylvania and drop like $2,000 on illegal fireworks, cross them into New York state, and we do a big show.”
Most of his Stevens’ Christmas music was recorded between 2000 and 2010, which he said was a more isolated period in his life, “usually in November-December, where I would get together with some friends for a week or two and we’d create without much forethought and improvise and jump into the Christmas catalog and try and create something as quickly as possible. Sort of like first thought, best thought.”
He revealed that this was also the reason he abandoned his “50 states” project, in which he planned to record an album inspired by each of our country’s states.
“I go on all these excursions and I feel they’re indulgent and slightly megalomaniacal in their approach,” he said. “At some point, I realize how absurd and unhealthy and unsustainable it is, so I am fine moving on.”