On October 29th, 1994, a young Mariah Carey (under the Columbia Records label) released the album Merry Christmas, which included the song All I Want for Christmas Is You. The song was an immediate hit, despite the American singer’s initial doubts about releasing a Christmas album. “I was a little anxious,” the artist admits. “My record company said, ‘You should do a Christmas album,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know if it’s the right time.’ I was very young,” she continues, “and in the beginning, I thought a Christmas album was something you did later in your career. Now they’re made at any time, even when you’re at the top. I was a little anxious but then I thought: I love the idea. I decorated the studio and had a lot of fun”[1].
It was a decision that couldn’t have been more right, because since that distant October 1994, there hasn’t been a Christmas that hasn’t been accompanied by the melody of All I Want for Xmas. The global success is easily summarized by the numbers reported by Repubblica: it’s the second best-selling Christmas song of all time, by 2013 the song had sold 16 million copies and earned over 50 million in royalties, in 2021 Carey received the diamond record (a first for a Christmas single), and last year (2023) the US Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry chose it as a recording of historical and cultural significance for the country.
Over the years, there have been countless covers (Michael Bublè, Bon Jovi, Ivana Spagna, and Cristina D’Avena, just to name a few).
To celebrate the 30th anniversary, Mariah Carey has launched a Christmas tour of about twenty dates in the United States, which began in early November and will end on December 17th, just before Christmas.

Happy Xmas

While “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is undoubtedly a holiday classic, it would be unfair not to mention other great hits that have marked the history of Christmas music. One incredibly famous song is “Happy Xmas” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The song, with its simple yet effective melody, masterfully combines, thanks to John Lennon’s genius, the Christmas theme with the saddest human issue of all time: war.
This hymn to peace set against a Christmas backdrop is a small gem, softened by the presence of a children’s choir that emerges in the chorus as a unified cry against the atrocities that, unfortunately, still occur today. This innocent and penetrating voice never disappears from the song and in the verses becomes a counterpoint to the main voice, almost as if to signify that the unheard cry of children continues to haunt the perpetrators: a tragedy that must never be repeated!

Last Xmas

We can’t not mention a song that has become iconic for the Christmas music tradition, even though the lyrics talk about a love story that didn’t work out. The song we’re referring to is Last Christmas by Wham! The British duo released the single on December 15, 1984, so it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and is still one of the most listened-to songs in December; in fact, in the age of social media, the challenge called Whamageddon was born, which consists of surviving, without listening to this song, from the 1st to the 12th of December, a rather difficult challenge given the enormous success of the song, especially in the last month of the year. In terms of content, we are very far from Lennon’s Happy Xmas and we travel on a much more superficial wavelength. However, what makes listening to Last Christmas bittersweet is the personal story of the duo’s frontman: George Michael. The British singer, who became famous thanks to this song with its typical 80s sound, tragically passed away on Christmas Day in 2016.

Feliz Navidad

Among the most beloved songs and certainly the simplest, not only among Christmas songs but in the world’s discography of all time (second only to Happy Birthday, perhaps), we find Feliz Navidad. The simplicity of the piece is the key to its success: 3 chords and only 19 words divided between Spanish and English (6 in Spanish and 13 in English) recorded in 10 minutes.
“The idea of Feliz Navidad was to unite people. When I wrote the song I thought that it didn’t matter what language it was sung in, but the awareness that the Christmas feeling is something that concerns us all,” these are the words of Feliciano that Repubblica reports on the occasion of the interview for the 50th anniversary of the song’s release; Feliz Navidad was released in 1970 only with the name of its author but immediately became one of the most famous songs of the Puerto Rican singer; only in 2001 was the song given its current title. The song is one of the greatest hits (as evidenced by its inclusion in the Grammy Hall of Fame which selects the most important and significant songs in American history). On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the song’s release, 30 artists recorded a celebratory version of Feliz Navidad: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jason Mraz, Shaggy, Michael Bolton and Gloria Gaynor among the most important names involved in the initiative.

Jingle Bells

It’s curious the case of Jingle Bells, probably the song that most of all evokes the Christmas atmosphere; however, the song has a completely different origin. Kyna Hamill, a researcher at Boston University and a volunteer at the Medford Historical Society & Museum, discovered a commemorative plaque for Jingle Bells in a Massachusetts town composed in 1850 by the musician James Lord Pierpont who, inspired by the sound of the bells heard during the sleigh races that were a local Christmas tradition, composed the melody of the song.
However, the researcher discovers that another city in Georgia (Savannah to be precise) also claims paternity of Jingle Bells; here the locals date the composition back to 1857. Intrigued by this discrepancy, Dr. Hamill begins to investigate the archives and discovers the unexpected: the composer, who according to tradition loved the Christmas spirit so much as to dedicate a song to Christmas, was in reality a destitute man who supported slavery. It seems that the song was performed for the first time in 1857 in a Boston venue, Ordway Hall, with the title One Horse Open Sleigh and performed by Johnny Pell and his group who mocked African Americans by blackening their faces; the venue was, moreover, famous for hosting racist parody shows to entertain whites. The song will then be recorded with the title Jingle Bells in 1859 and gaining increasing popularity over the years, being then cleaned up from any racist undertones and becoming a symbol of Christmas in 1898 with the version of the Edison Male Quartette.

By Antonio Di Criscito