Speaking of chestnuts and flames, right now there are a lot of Bob Dylan fans who'd like to roast their hero over an open fire. I'm talking about the extremely polarized reaction to Christmas in the Heart, Dylan's Christmas album... which, depending on who you talk to, is either a jolly good lark, a sincere and sentimental take on the holidays, or the ultimate betrayal of a man's art and the end of rock & roll integrity as we knew it.

He's truly made his most controversial record since the born-again years. And I, for one, am happy to see him dividing people again, because what's more rock & roll than doing that? Unless it's doing that by recording fairly faithful renditions of "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"? Perhaps you remember the old maxim: "Screw art—let's dance." (It actually read a little bit different from that, but you get the gist.) Well, Dylan's take on the holidays is basically: "Screw art—let's Prancer."

There's no original material; every song is a familiar or semi-famiiliar holiday standard. In other words, don't expect to hear any original Dylan tunes along the lines of "Blowin' in the Blizzard," "Positively 34^th Street," "Don't Check Your List Twice, It's All Right," "I Want Yule," "The Lonesome Death of a Christmas Carol," or "Ballad of a Jolly Fat Man." Neither did he put his imagination to work on a less generic album title—like, say, Blitzer on Blitzer, Nog on the Tracks, The Freestyle-Skiin' Bob Dylan, Santa Claus Lane Revisited, The Toyshop Tapes, Slow Horsedrawn-Sleigh Coming, Under the Blood Red Mistletoe, or Elf Portrait. (I'll be here all week, folks.)

No, it's simply called Christmas in the Heart, and the cover art of a pre-modern sleigh, very much in the old-school tradition of Currier and Ives, is a tipoff that the project is both sincerely and nostalgically intended, with no serious attempts at Christmas revisionism—even though, by its very nature, that voice being applied to those songs is going to involve some hefty revision.

His chops are reasonably smooth—and I mean smooth for a long-time smoker now in his 60s—on some of the material, like the single "Must Be Santa" and "Here Comes Santa Claus." But on the quieter hymns and ballads, he's almost purposefully raggedy. There are some apparent first takes that would have sent any other singer in the world back to the studio's break room for an herbal tea time-out, but not our Bob.

Simon Cowell, who once sniffed that Dylan would never make it on Idol, will have no reason to change his mind here, but who cares? You have to assume there's a deliberateness on his part when he's capable of a more palatable vocal reading yet sings a few of these tunes in his most scorched voice. Of course there is a contrast between his intonations and the mellifluousness of the background singers, like Tom Waits on a rough day fronting the Jordainaires. Listening to him sing "I'll Be Home for Christmas," it's hard to imagine the narrator will be headed anywhere other than the VA hospital for the holidays.

But I love the fact that Dylan is being true to both himself and his influences in every regard. The raggedy-ness? That's him, right now. And the controversial slickness of most of the arrangements ? True to the records he heard growing up in the late '50s, even if at times the album sounds squarer than Washington Square. Lead vocals aside, Christmas in the Heart is close to a dead ringer for one of those LPs they used to sell inexpensively or give away at gas stations and supermarkets 40 or 50 years ago. If you're of a certain advanced age, you might even feel weird paying for it in anything other than S&H Green Stamps.

Don't mistake it for a toss-off, in any case; Dylan insiders say his heart really was in it—that he took the project very seriously and did a good deal of recording for it, spontaneous as it might sound. (It's worth a side note to mention that this is the first time he's ever publicly aligned himself with a charitable organization, and his income from it will go directly to Feeding America in the U.S., Crisis UK in England, and the World Food Program in other territories.)