Halloween may only just be behind us, but that hasn’t stopped Mariah Carey from officially ringing in the festive season as she declared 1 November to be the first day of Christmas.
The unofficial queen of all things festive, Carey has been associated with the yuletide season since the release of her 1994 single “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which has since snowballed into one of the biggest Christmas tracks of all time.
As a result, fans have grown used to Carey officially marking the beginning of Christmas once Halloween is over. In previous years, she’s smashed up pumpkins and transformed from a witch into Santa to celebrate the season.
As the clock struck midnight on Wednesday (1 November), Carey – who had dressed as Regina George from Mean Girls for Halloween – posted a new video. The clip showed an ice-covered bank vault, with the clock signifying that it was 11.59pm on 31 October.
As soon as the time changed to midnight, the vault door swung open, revealing Carey inside, dressed in red while captured in a block of ice. Around her, people dressed as Halloween characters, with pumpkins for heads and Ghostface masks, were shown blowing the ice with hairdressers, referencing a meme joking that Carey hibernates for 10 months of the year and only needs “defrosting” for November and December.
Eventually, Carey was able to release herself, singing the words: “It’s time” at whistle-note pitch and causing the ice to smash. Swiftly, Carey is surrounded by snow, Christmas presents, and people excited for Christmas cheer as “All I Want For Christmas Is You” plays.
Carey begins defrosting— (Mariah Carey/Twitter)
Released 29 years ago, Carey’s Christmas song wasn’t always the smash hit it is now. The song reached No 2 in the UK on its first release – closely missing out on the historic Christmas No 1 spot to East 17’s “Stay Another Day” – but only charted one time in the US in its first 18 years, when it reached No 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000.
While the song’s pivotal role in Richard Curtis’s festive 2003 romcom Love Actually contributed to its notoriety, it would take the 2010s and the rise of streaming and the Christmas playlist for Carey’s song to become truly inescapable.
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” returned to the US charts in 2012, reaching No 21, and slowly rose up the ranks every year since. Since 2019, it has reached No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 every year over the Christmas period, and topped the UK chart for the first time in 2019.
Mariah Carey is the unofficial queen of Christmas— (Getty Images for dick clark prod)
In December 2021, the song made pop history when it became the first and only holiday single to win the RIAA’s Diamond Award, which recognises 10 million sales and streaming units in the US.
Beneath Carey’s video, in which she declared that we were now in “Mariah season”, fans celebrated the return of Carey and Christmas.
“November 1st should be a public holiday at this point in honour of Mariah’s annual announcement,” one commenter wrote.
“Not only she’s queen of Christmas, but she’s slowly stealing Halloween!” another joked.
