Bob Dylan’s Christmas album is fa la la la lame

In my younger years, I used to approach the Christmas holiday with equal parts excitement and trepidation. The joys of the holiday season were obvious to any hyperactive child entrenched in ’90s consumerism: presents, time off from school, increased possibility of snow, relatives with even more presents, etc. However, seething beneath this red and green lit, stocking-filled world of Santa Claus and Snoopy blimps was the upsetting imbalance of popular radio stations and their insipid and boring renditions of “holiday classics” (seriously, how many covers “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” can you play?).

Nevertheless, it exhibited one of life’s clearest representations of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood. If there was one thing that pulled me through those moments of agony, it was conceiving some of those songs and artists as a kind of inside joke, a “you think I’m selling out, but I’m really selling everybody else out.” When the Smashing Pumpkins, The Beach Boys and the Eagles appeared on holiday compilations casually singing Christmas tunes, my reaction was to quickly defend the tracks and perhaps reveal myself as something other than a juvenile Grinch.

My point is this: Bob Dylan’s “Christmas in the Heart” isn’t that. Where the alibi of original song-crafting persisted for the likes of The Beach Boys and Sufjan Stevens’ recent songs for Christmas, Bob Dylan throws it to the wind with an entire album of covers. The raspy, leathery qualities of his voice don’t evoke the Christmas nostalgia the way it’s supposed to on “Christmas in the Heart.” While Dylan’s acoustics on previous records do, in fact, harken us back to early, often parochial memories of country estates and wintery meadows, here the effect is not unlike a drunken uncle on Boxing Day.

Perhaps this is part of a common defect in most of us; with songs about the holidays we want with a warm cup of kitsch or somber inflection. And, yes, there’s some of the latter on “Christmas in the Heart” with “Christmas Blues” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but Dylan’s covers pale in comparison to the originals, especially to Garland’s rendition which has the all the emotional weight of its context. Still, the album is for charity and maybe the sublimation of the holiday spirit or something like that.

And while I can’t outright recommend the album to the casual music omnivore, it is interesting and, well, Bob Dylan. But if you’re new to Dylan and see a Pulitzer Prize next to his name; do yourself a favor and skip this one. Sometimes it’s best not to be home for the holidays.