Personnel: Mary Chapin Carpenter (vocals, acoustic guitar); John Jennings (guitars, accordion, piano, drums, percussion); John Carroll (piano).

Audio Mixer: John Jennings.

Many artists, when faced with the task of doing a Christmas album, merely knock out a selection of familiar pop tunes and perhaps a hymn or two and call it at that. Mary-Chapin Carpenter's COME DARKNESS, COME LIGHT: TWELVE SONGS OF CHRISTMAS is something entirely different: a largely self-written song cycle capturing several different aspects of the holiday season with grace, wit, and feeling. Carpenter, always a songwriter of emotional complexity and novelistic detail, invests these 12 songs with both delicacy and strength.

Dirty Linen (p.63) - "This is an intimate, reflective album....There is darkness and light here, but always joy behind the sadness, connection behind the separateness, hope on the other side of disconnection."