Sure it was a surprise to hear that Dylan would do a Christmas record, but if you get past the initial shock once, it seems only logical, and the record sounds in amazing ways just exactly how to make a Christmas plate from Dylan imagines - the course you can like it or not. Dylan has made a two-hour radio show on Christmas two years ago, and all his records since "Love & Theft" are based on a sound and a tradition that goes back even behind its first LPs from the early sixties. With its ultra-retro Christmas album he is so just a little bit more conservative than stock today those "fans", in 2009 still trying to pin him down on a protest song track which he left in 1964 at the latest. And that he has finally made a record again after four hyped by critics and universally friendly abgenickten "masterpieces", which ensures much controversy, but is very welcome and should give him new energy itself. I wonder what's next? Sure it's not his best record (hey, who could expect?), But as "Together Through Life", it is characterized precisely by a refreshing nonchalance and a love of music, which makes up for any imperfections. Dylan knows he will not invent "Blonde on Blonde" all over again, but at last he no longer who cares, but does what he enjoys. I think that the secular "Crooner" him are here -Balladen best managed "I'll be home for Christmas," "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", "The Christmas Song". "Must be Santa" is a sublime mix of polka, punk and kindergarten nursery rhyme, and "The Christmas Blues" is really a rock solid Dylan blues, to every fan could burn to a sampler, without ashamed why or justify must. I'm not a big fan of Christmas and Christmas - this disc will but make it sound a little sweeter to me in future the bells, and I am pleased now alongside Bach's Christmas Oratorio to have something else, which I henceforth all years can torment my family again ,