The 25 days of Christmas: Day 15

It's time to address the elephant in the room.

Christmas 2021. Covid had abated enough that we felt safe to travel, and after a few years of staying home, Christmas in New York sounded lovely. My mother-in-law was living there at the time, and so, despite a general dislike of traveling for the holidays, my wife and young son and I flew up for a few days.

On Christmas Eve we wanted to treat everyone to a nice dinner. En route to the restaurant (some swanky place in Manhattan that I’ve forgotten the name of but you should definitely go there) we walked by Rockefeller Center and saw the big tree. There is a public plaza right next to it, and a crowd of people was standing around, talking with loved ones, taking selfies, laughing. Music was playing and the mood was jovial. Then this song started up:

In one of those grand moments of spontaneous crowd unity that can never be planned but will stay with me forever, we all, many hundreds of us, began singing along with Mariah Carey at the top of our lungs. Our little band moved through the crowd, heading toward dinner, and everywhere we looked people were singing and dancing and grinning and hugging. It was an instant of pure joy and my heart is a little lighter every time I remember it.

I know it may take an effort to listen to this one with new ears. It’s been played to the point of becoming sonic wallpaper, and that’s truly a shame because this is an A-plus piece of songcraft, sung by one of pop’s all-time great vocalists and performers, and orchestrated and arranged perfectly to support the material.

Listen to the modulations from bar to bar. The melody of “I don’t want a lot for Christmas” is nearly echoed but deftly given new urgency the next time it comes around as “I don’t care about the presents.” And the reflective descending notes as we turn inward on “I just want you for my own,” leading to the triumphant wail of “Make my wish come true!”

And listen to that chord change that leads into “And all the lights are shining,” from D to B7, instead of the mushy Bm or Bm7 that your ear expects: That’s a counterintuitive change that lands as solid as anything in the Beatles’ catalog. There’s not a single misstep in this pure pop banger and I look forward to hearing it every year. I hope you will too.

Notes:

• I was never a huge fan of Mariah Carey’s music, and so I was rather oblivious as she rose to become the top-selling female music artist in history. This song is the tenth-best-selling single in history (and will likely remain so, since no one buys singles anymore). The song holds three Guinness records: highest-charting holiday (Christmas/New Year) song on the U.S. Hot 100 chart by a solo artist; most-streamed track on Spotify in 24 hours (female); and most weeks in the U.K. singles top 10 chart for a Christmas song.

• I am well aware that every year, smirking hipster Grinches take December as an opportunity to malign this song. I am deaf to their carping.

• If this isn’t your cup of nog, maybe give She & Him’s version a chance.