The Process

I’m not a huge Christmas person, typically. I don’t exactly know why that is. I promise I’m not just trying to be contrarian, there’s something about the season that doesn’t quite reach me in the same ways I see it reaching others.

In 2025, I decided that despite my mysterious apathy concerning the most wonderful time of the year, I would find some special way to celebrate on my own terms. I chose to forsake some of the typical avenues I believed to be the key to getting jolly (traditional Christmas movies, Michael Bublé’s dulcet tones, deliberately-ugly sweaters) and took stock of the things that gave me joy throughout the year.

Baking, decorating, and designing. Specifically, design inspired by music.

I was listening to traditional hymnal Christmas carols one day and realized how rich they were. As a christian, I’m aware there’s a joy to the season that is inherently tinged with sorrow. Christ is born! He’s here to show us the way to the Good Life, which ultimately hinges on whether or not we’re willing to follow him into a necessary kind of death. This time of year is full of family and good food and thoughtful gifts, and it also centers around difficult, bittersweet, cosmic truths: Jesus Christ is the Messiah, he appeared and the soul felt its worth, he was born that man no more may die, he saves us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.

Below is a collection of designs I created during this season, with especially-weighty lyrics that stood out to me from classic hymns.