"All I Want for Christmas Is You" is not a Christmas song
Not trying to start a fight. Just stating facts.
Writing-slash-complaining about Christmas songs is, to be sure, an annual tradition — right up there with egg nog and anxiety-induced shopping, and getting pro-forma Minted.com Christmas cards in the mail from people you only sorta ever talk to.
And I want to be clear, I’m not here to *complain* about Mariah Carey’s 1994 smash sensation, All I Want for Christmas Is You (hereinafter, AIW4CIU). I just .. I want to talk about it.
If I WERE to complain about a Christmas song, it would have to be the all-time worst, most ear-numbingly-bad “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney. That this song is bad (epically bad) is frankly just self-evident. It is all the more unforgivable for having been written/performed by Sir Paul. If some no-talent ass clown of a lounge singer had come up with a couple brain-dead lyrics that then repeat for 8 uninterrupted minutes, fine. But Sir Paul knows better. He did know better. He has no excuse.
OR if I were seeking to join the discourse pile-on, I guess I could write yet another post about Baby It’s Cold Outside, but I mean.. why do that to myself? Why do that to you? Maybe the song sucks. Maybe it’s empowering. Maybe it’s both at the same time. It’s not 2014, so we don’t have to have this fight. We’ve all moved on.
This year, everyone has thoughts about the throwback 80s Christmas song, Last Christmas, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. And I admit, I’m kinda torn on this one, honestly. On the one hand.. yes, it slaps. Sorta. The vibes are pretty great. It’s made for some great covers, also. But like Sir Paul’s contribution to the holiday music canon, the song is also craazy repetitive. It does tell a story, I mean — I’m interested in the heartbreak that lies at the core of the song’s appeal. The dude got dumped the day after Christmas! But that was last Christmas — now he’s putting himself out there again! Which is great! But.. I’m also kinda left hanging. Like.. is he gonna be ok? The lyrics just say the same thing over and over, but I need to know more about this year of growth he’s supposedly undergone before I can really be excited that he’s found true Christmas romance.
All of that is to say, people be writing about Christmas songs, because it’s that time of year. But what I haven’t seen *anywhere* is a proper take on AIW4CIU, which — and I know this is not going to sit well with everyone, but facts are facts — is NOT, actually, if you think about it, even a Christmas song.
First thing’s first.. I will absolutely concede this song is a complete juggernaut. The single completely blows up the very concept of the Billboard Hot 100, because it goes to Number 1 every year. It’s literally been a Number 1 hit every year since 2019, it’s defined Mariah’s career in a way that was surely unforeseeable in the 90s, and it’s arguably the most commercially successful song of that entire decade.1 Because the song is so phenomenally popular, AND it continues to resurface year after year after year, it’s the one megahit that skews just about every metric you can think of for judging an artist’s success. Owing to AIW4CIU, Mariah has had a number 1 hit in every decade going back to the 90s. She’s the only artist in history to have a song hit number 1 in three or more separate chart runs. This song is having a MOMENT, and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon.
And yet. Humbly, I would like to suggest that there is a problem. The thing is, Christmas music is an extremely well-defined genre. We know it when we hear it, and for two months out of every year, it’s nigh on inescapable. But the reason Christmas music is so recognizable — the reason we all feel it so intensely — ah, yes, this is Christmas music — is that there are certain fundamental themes that are always present in the genre. In no particular order, I submit that those defined, requisite themes are:
Coming together, seeing people, family. This is an obvious first theme. It’s what “Christmas” means to the widest swath of the general public. A classic representative song that evokes this theme is the oft-covered Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). See also, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
Looking back on Christmases past. Closely related to the first theme, but this one has the added element of some appeal to history. We’re encouraged to think about the years going by, Christmases coming and going. There’s a lot to mine here. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is the canonical song in this lane (through the years we all will be together…). Last Christmas, with its call-out to a 12-month-old breakup, also fits this theme perfectly.2 So does White Christmas (just like the ones I used to know…).
Presents, kids, Santa, snow, sleigh rides, etc. Most Christmas songs fall into this category. It’s the big catch-all for Christmas stuff, and it’s obviously easy to recognize a song that leans heavily into this mode. Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jingle Bell Rock, Walking In a Winter Wonderland, etc. You get the idea.
Sadness. Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the final important theme in many of the best Christmas bangers — seasonal, holiday-induced, wrist-slitting depression. Honestly these are some of my all-time favorites. I’ll be Home for Christmas would make anyone want to put their head in an oven. But there’s also Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis by Tom Waits. Another Lonely Christmas by Prince. Of course the comically pathetic Christmas Shoes also belongs here. Not all of these songs even get to Christmas the holiday as such, but they all capture the familiar despair of the season — 16 hours of darkness every day, sad lonely Christmas lights, alcoholism.. it’s all there.
But that’s it. That’s the list! I think it’s fair to say that your Christmas song of choice has to have at LEAST one of these four elements in order to be a proper Christmas song.3
AIW4CIU checks NONE of these boxes. It doesn’t even try. It’s a love letter to ONE, single person. The narrator is explicit that she’s REJECTING all the trappings of Christmas in favor of spending time with her boyfriend / partner / lover — and that’s it. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need” is not a lyric about enjoying the holiday season. It’s not about the holiday at all, in fact. The fundamental message in the lyric is that Christmas is a pain-in-the-ass that’s in the way of what our heroine would actually rather do — which is spend time 1-on-1 with her significant other! That’s what’s implicit in the notion of “all I want.” She wants a particular person, and she necessarily does not want what the rest of us think of as.. you know. Christmas.
To be fair, the fact that AIW4CIU sits outside the Christmas canon is not intuitive. I didn’t realize it myself until just this past weekend, when Sam and I were in midtown Manhattan near Rockefeller Center (where else does one go to experience Christmas joy??). There were a bunch of those cheesy tourist pedicabs all decked out in Christmas lights and they were cruising up and down Sixth Avenue looking for easy marks. Each and every one of the pedicabs was blasting ONE song over and over again as they rode through midtown — and that song was AIW4CIU. Sure, I guess Mariah is a hometown girl in New York, and New Yorkers do love a local fave. But like.. the whole thing was giving cheesy Valentine’s Day vibes. Like.. schmaltzy dozen-roses-box-of-chocolates-we’re-in-New-York-and-it’s-so-romaaantic energy. It had nothing to do with Christmas. Taking in that scene, I realized AIW4CIU is a Valentine’s Day anthem, through and through. We don’t have any really good Valentine’s songs. It’s a shame that this one keeps mentioning the wrong holiday.
My point is not that AIW4CIU is a bad song. It is not. It is in fact a great song, as evidenced by its chart performance year after year. But we should recognize it for what it is — this is a song about someone who *hates Christmas* and wants nothing to do with it. And honestly, I mean.. god bless. We’ve all been there. I have absolutely had Christmases where the thought of gathering ‘round the tree with presents and family makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs with a cocktail fork. Escaping with just one person sounds amazing. But that wouldn’t be “Christmas,” and I don’t think we should have to pretend otherwise.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Sure, who cares. I’m not going to pick a fight on that one. But if we’re re-thinking which bits of pop culture properly belong under the Christmas tent, we should also talk about which things might need to be cast out. And that’s AIW4CIU. It’s not a Christmas song. It had to be said. That’s all.
Not that this translates to being objectively the best song of the 90s. Clearly not! I don’t even think it’s the best song of 1994, personally, but there’s some seriously heavy competition on that front. See, e.g., Stay by Lisa Loeb, Dreams by the Cranberries, All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow.. it was a great year.
Interestingly, Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me fits in this category but inverts it by appealing to Christmas next year. It’s sort of the mirror compliment to Last Christmas, which makes me sad we’ll never get a George Michael / Ariana Grande crossover duet.
I would note that the Charlie Brown Christmas Album by the Vince Guaraldi Trio spectacularly manages to check every one of these boxes while also being mostly an instrumental album — which I think explains why it’s unquestionably the single best album in the genre.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 this substack is now the topic of several text chains I'm on. Debates are raging. And I could not disagree with you more. Christmas is right there in the title! 😋