Christmas in the Heart (2009)
1. Here Comes Santa Claus
2. Do You Hear What I Hear?
3. Winter Wonderland
4. Hark the Herald Angels Sing
5. I'll Be Home For Christmas
6. Little Drummer Boy
7. The Christmas Blues
8. O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)
9. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
10.Must Be Santa
11.Silver Bells
12.The First Noel
13.Christmas Island
14.The Christmas Song
15.O' Little Town of Bethlehem
At this stage in Bob Dylan’s career, surprise is a currency long since spent. Yet even by his standards, Christmas in the Heart—a full-length holiday album of traditional carols and seasonal standards—seemed particularly eccentric. The notion that the once-maligned prophet of generational upheaval would don his musical tinsel and croak out O Little Town of Bethlehem invited curiosity, amusement, and no small amount of bewilderment. But then again, this is the same man who, after all, would one day release an album of Sinatra covers with utter sincerity. Context is everything—and Dylan’s context is singular.
On paper, the concept isn’t entirely implausible. For the better part of two decades, Dylan had been morphing into a kind of gravel-throated vaudevillian—his voice a worn rasp, his phrasing ever more antique. Traditional music, from folk ballads to jump blues, had become his natural habitat. A collection of carols and Christmas curiosities, then, might seem like an organic extension of his American songbook inclinations.
And for a moment, it works. Tracks like The Christmas Blues hint at what could have been—a minimalist, smoky-eyed recording in the mold of his recent material. But that possibility is dashed early on. Instead of spare arrangements or intimate interpretations, the album is drenched in full-on retro kitsch: saccharine background vocals, glockenspiel flourishes, and orchestrations that would make Lawrence Welk blush. The result? Dylan, ever inscrutable, sounds like a reluctant guest star on a 1970s variety show.
Vocally, he commits. His delivery is straight-faced, at times earnest, but rarely expressive in a way that suits the material. There’s a strange, stubborn fidelity to the source arrangements—as if he were less interested in reimagining these songs than in preserving them in all their glistening, eggnog-drenched glory. The effect is both baffling and, on occasion, oddly endearing.
To his credit, Dylan doesn’t limit himself to the familiar fare. Alongside standards like Silver Bells and Here Comes Santa Claus are lesser-known tracks that at least broaden the album’s palette. But the clashing of aesthetic—Dylan’s craggy tone versus the sugary studio sheen—remains unresolved. It’s not so much a reinvention as a collision.
Yet for all its incongruities, Christmas in the Heart deserves mention, if not for its success, then for its audacity. In a market saturated with identical seasonal offerings, Dylan’s entry is—however unintentionally—distinct. And while it may never replace Bing Crosby in the collective holiday consciousness, it does provide a uniquely strange artifact in the long, labyrinthine saga of Dylan’s musical wanderings.
As with most of his late-period work, Christmas in the Heart isn’t designed for mass consumption. It’s a curio, a throwback, a kind of performance art wrapped in tinsel. That it exists at all is, perhaps, the most Dylan-esque thing about it.
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