25 Days of Christmas Albums: Light of the Stable ✧ Emmylou Harris ✧ 1979

I haven’t spent a lot of time with this album yet, but I’ve recently been on an Emmylou Harris bender, listening to the Rhino retrospective Anthology: The Warner/Reprise Years. This album features cameos by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt (previewing their supergroup album Trio released almost a decade later), as well as Willie Nelson and Neil Young.

The album is at its loveliest when it’s in full bluegrass mode, on such songs as “Christmas Time’s A-Coming,” “The First Noel,” and “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” The session musicians on this album are top notch. “There’s a Light” may be my favorite track (not available on the original vinyl, this was released on an expanded edition). The album is remarkably cohesive, always forwarding the theme of light in the darkness, water in the desert, the concept of advent in both its most secular and religious uses.