http://oliverdiplace.blogspot.com/2011/12/holiday-folk.html
Traveler's Dream is the duo of Michael Lewis and Denise Wilson, but each plays several instruments, so they often sound like a larger group. Cold Blows the Day is an album of Christmas songs, mostly familiar. There are many such albums, of varying quality. Aside from the quality of the musicianship, what makes an album like this work is a set of performances that make it clear that the artists care about the meaning of the songs. Lewis and Wilson deliver. There appear to be very few Solstice songs, but there are more than most people realize, and they are hiding in plain sight, as Christmas songs. The Holly and the Ivy is one of these. The line in the chorus about "sweet singing in the choir" almost certainly replaced earlier words as the song became Christianized. But Lewis and Wilson, with Holly and the Ivy Revisited, put the song back in the woods that it came from. Their lyrical changes are not restorations of lost text, but simply an attempt to restore the original spirit of the song. The care for the roots of this music comes through beautifully in their performances throughout the album.