Christmas in a Broken World

I keep saying I’m done with Christmas.

And then December hits, and my brain does the same thing it always does:it remembers the lights.

Not the ads, not the chaos, not the “perfect family” photos with matching pajamas and a mortgage. The lights. The quiet glow in a dark room. The way a single candle still feels like defiance when everything else is burning.

Christmas in a Broken World is my attempt to make music for that feeling—for the people who still love the season, but can’t pretend everything around it isn’t on fire.

This is a Christmas record for punks, leftists, disabled and poor folks, queer weirdos, burned-out former believers, and anyone who can’t unsee genocide, capitalism, and megachurch branding campaigns… and still hasn’t let go of the tiny, stubborn part of themselves that wants something holy in the mess.

It’s eight tracks. No filler. No fake cheer. Just carols that tell the truth and still leave a little room for mercy.

Why “Christmas in a Broken World”?

Because I’m tired of acting like the only options are:

• ✨ Hallmark Christmas – where everything is soft focus and the worst thing that happens is someone burns the cookies,

  
  

  Or

  
  

• 🖤 Total cynicism – where you’re not allowed to enjoy anything without apologizing for it.

I don’t want either.

I wanted an album where you can:

• Sing along to familiar melodies

• Acknowledge that capitalism is killing us

• Name genocide out loud

• Talk about disability, poverty, psych wards, burnout

• And still have real warmth in the middle of all that

So that’s what I wrote.

Track by track: a quick tour of the wreckage (and the hope)

1. Jingle Bells (Mall Rat Christmas)

I wanted at least one song that just… lets joy be joy, without pretending everything else isn’t happening.

This is Christmas ska in a mall.

Fluorescent lights, slush on the floor, broken carts, loud kids, clearance bins, awkward Santa photos. But instead of making it about consumption or cringe, it leans into the tiny real connections that still happen in the chaos:

• Slipping in the slush and laughing about it with a friend

• Dropping your bags, getting helped up by a stranger who actually stays for a second

• Sharing thrift-store sweaters and cheap soup

• Making a small pocket of real warmth inside a frantic, over-branded environment

It’s not denial. It’s survival joy. That “we are broke and tired but somehow still dancing” kind of joy.

2. Joy to the Few

This one is… not subtle.

“Joy to the world” becomes “Joy for the few.”

It’s about:

• Joy as a luxury product

• Landlords, shareholders, and executives getting the comfort, heat, and safety

• Everyone else trying to squeeze meaning out of scraps

The verses track how profit gets treated as sacred while human beings are treated as expendable. The choruses say outright:

If there’s joy that still rings true,it won’t be bought or owned by you.

And yet, by the end, it circles back to a different kind of joy: the messy, rough, shared kind that comes from holding each other up when the systems don’t. A joy that chooses all of you, not just the people at the top of the pyramid.

3. O Come All Ye Branded

Imagine megachurch Christmas as a TED Talk product launch.

Fog machines. Moving lights. Camera cranes. Branded sermon series. A “worship experience” that feels more like an ad campaign than an act of care.

This rewrite turns:

“O come, all ye faithful…”

into

“O come, all ye branded…”

The whole song is about:

• Faith-as-brand

• The algorithm as god

• Churches packaging “authenticity” as an aesthetic while ignoring the people who are actually suffering in their pews and outside their doors

By the time we hit:

O come, sell them a savior, O come, package the gospel, O come, tithe to the image…

it’s pretty clear who the “Lord” of that space really is.

If you’ve ever sat in a Christmas service that felt like a commercial, this one is for you.

4. Silent Night in a Broken World

This is the spine of the whole EP.

“Silent Night,” but the “holy night” is lit by phone screens and hospital fluorescents instead of candlelight. Every verse moves through a different layer of the world we’re in:

• The blue-white glow of timelines and doom-scrolling

• The panopticon we all helped build—surveillance, algorithms, “the eye” we keep feeding

• Psych wards and paper wristbands, where “this is for your own good” is used to justify control

• The way pain gets turned into spectacle and content

• And then, somehow, one person choosing not to join in the cruelty—shutting the feed, walking away, lighting a literal or metaphorical candle instead

It ends with this basic, stubborn idea: If there’s any “child” worth protecting this season, let it be the mercy we buried to survive.

It’s dark. It’s honest. And it’s still a lullaby.

5. In the Bleak Forever Winter

“In the Bleak Midwinter” has always felt like this raw, fragile melody. I wanted to keep that and retune the lyrics toward climate collapse and hoarded resources.

This version lives in:

• A warmed planet where storms hit harder and harder

• Billionaires and boardrooms hoarding food, power, and shelter

• Warehouses full of what people need, locked away from the people who need it

The last verse lands here:

If I owned the power, I would break the dam; if I had the shelter, I would tear the locks apart—but what I’m left to offer, just my heart.

It’s not romanticizing poverty. It’s a direct question: Why is all we’re allowed to offer our hearts, when there’s so much more that could be shared—but isn’t?

6. Carol for the Innocents

This is the heaviest track.

It’s a rewrite of Coventry Carol for all the children killed by empires—past and present.

Herod becomes:

• Politicians signing off on bombardments

• CEOs and boardrooms treating war like a line item

• Religious leaders blessing flags and guns while civilians die

It moves through:

• Bombs and sirens tearing through sleep

• Live-streamed genocide

• Camps, cages, borders, occupied streets

• Ghosts of trains, ovens, mass graves, and the way we keep repeating the same patterns with different branding

It ends not with comfort, but with acknowledgement:

What can we give you, tiny ones, Now dust in unnamed ground? We cannot give back stolen breath, But we can say you’re found.

And then a spoken line: “May your memories be a blessing — now and forever.”

This is not a feel-good song. It’s a promise that, at the very least, we will not look away.

7. We Wish You a Punk Christmas

This one is the opposite energy: loud, chantable, and a little bit bratty.

The original is basically “we demand dessert.” This version says:

“Oh, bring us a living wage now… and bring it right here.”

It’s still fun. It’s still catchy. It’s still recognizably We Wish You a Merry Christmas—but instead of begging for figgy pudding, we’re refusing to leave without economic justice.

It’s for the folks who:

• Are working through the holidays

• Are scraping by on wages that don’t match rent, food, meds, or life

• Keep getting told “joy is a choice” by people who’ve never had to choose between electricity and heat

It’s a protest carol with an actual chorus you can scream in your car on the way to a shift you didn’t want.

8. For Old Ghosts’ Sake

Finally, a quiet New Year’s benediction.

Auld Lang Syne at the end of the world.

This one is for:

• Old friends you marched with who drifted away

• Movements that fractured

• People who didn’t make it to this year

• The survivors who did, carrying all of it in their bodies

It doesn’t pretend everything worked out. It doesn’t clean up the endings. It just says:

We’re still here.

We remember.

Let’s share one cracked cup of kindness for everything we were, and everything we lost.

It’s the last track for a reason. It feels like standing in the doorway between years, holding grief in one hand and that tiny, stupid, beautiful hope in the other.

Who I made this for

I made Christmas in a Broken World for people who:

• Still put up a tree, even if it’s a $10 one from a dollar store

• Are disabled, chronically ill, or poor, and are just… so done with being told “joy is a choice” by people who are comfortable

• Are watching genocide in real time and feeling like singing “peace on earth” without naming it is a lie

• Grew up in church, got shredded by it, but still miss the feeling of voices singing together in the dark

• Live in punk, leftist, queer, neurodivergent, or activist spaces and want holiday music that doesn’t feel like betrayal

If you’re trying to hold candles and conscience at the same time, this EP is me saying:

You’re not alone. You’re not crazy. You’re not the only one who can’t pretend.

What I hope it does

I am not under any delusion that a Christmas EP will fix:

• Capitalism

• Climate collapse

• Genocide

• Medical abuse

• Wage theft

• Any of it

But I do believe that art can:

• Name what’s happening

• Keep us from feeling isolated in our awareness

• Give us language and melody when our throats are tired

• Offer small pockets of real connection in a season that often hurts

If even one song makes you feel a little more seen, a little less numb, or a little more willing to be gentle with yourself and others this month, then it’s done what it needed to do.

If you want to support it

If any of this resonated, here’s what helps most when you listen to Christmas in a Broken World:

• Save the album or your favorite track

• Add songs to your playlists (especially your weird, niche playlists—those are my people)

• Share a track with someone who’s also tired of fake cheer

• Use the songs in your own videos / stories / posts if they fit

• Tell me which lyric stuck with you – I really do want to know

You can stream it on Spotify and the usual places—Click here for the Spotify link!

Or, listen right here on your browser at the top of the blog post!

Until then: If this season is complicated for you, you’re in good company here.

This is my small, loud, glitchy, aching offering to anyone trying to celebrate honestly in a world that keeps insisting we lie.

Merry Christmas, in a broken world.

May we keep our candles—and each other—alive.