By Sophia Jin '26
When the winds turn a little harsher and the sweaters start to layer, the Christmas season begins: a time for reindeers, fireplaces, and capitalism.
The tunes of winter began in the fourth century with "Jesus refulsit omnium" or "Jesus illuminates all", and later continued into the 12th century with the "Wexford Carol", all celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
These days, Christmas songs are everywhere, from grocery stores to malls. They are blasted from early November to late December, as everything fills with that chilly delight in the northern hemisphere. Listened to by not just the Christian population of the world, pop songs like "White Christmas", "Jingle Bell Rock," and "Last Christmas" have been streamed hundreds of millions of times and topped charts even decades after they were released.
Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas", originally recorded in August 1994, was later released in October of that same year. It was an instant success and climbed to the music charts of the US, UK, and Japan. Since 2019, it has awaited its annual ascend to Billboard's Top 100, and the result? Royalties generate immense revenue, with estimates going from 2.5 to over 6 million dollars in total. Records show that this melody previously held the spot back in 2017 for most daily streams of 10.8 million on Christmas Eve. More recently, from November 10–16, the song climbed the Hot 100 once again, having reportedly been officially streamed 14 million times in the US over this period.
A 2019 Wired article revealed that recent scientific study shows most of the popular songs are quite old, from decades ago. So how do they still retain those top spots and continue to infatuate their audiences? Nostalgia and melodies from childhood are passed from parents to children. It is also attributed to the technicalities of these songs, with 95% having a major key and the median tempo being 115 bpm faster than the average song, which ranges from 60 to 90 bpm.
However, despite the entrancement of these older melodies, artists continue to create new music for the snowy season, like Taylor Swift's "Christmas Tree Farm" and Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe." Yet, the most successful of which is the Canadian singer Michael Bublé, with almost a dozen songs on the top chart for 2016, all released after the 2000s; his most popular song, 'Simply Christmas’ from 2016, earned him hundreds of thousands in royalties and have sold over 75 million copies worldwide.
In addition, Ariana Grande's "Santa Tell Me" has also been climbing the charts since its debut in 2014, with over 800 million streams on Spotify, making it the third most popular Christmas song on this platform and earning her a whopping total of 1.5 million on Spotify alone. However, these profits are only a small fraction of the almost annual trillion-dollar Christmas industry, with estimates by the National Retail Foundation of 2023 spending around 957 to 967 billion dollars between November and December, which increased around 3-4% from 2022, continuously fueling our economy with these additional holiday sales.
Albeit an argument can be made that this commercialization of Christmas only widens the gap between our social classes, it's continuously been a source of profit for artists and big corporations. On the other hand, I like to see this season as one of warm wishes and kind actions, where according to UK fundraising, 61% of people are more likely to donate during this period of giving back.
As the Christmas playlists reshuffle and the commercialization of Christmas continues, I am still all for it, catching each drop of that nutmeg cheer and the ring of those jingle bells as those jolly lyrics fill the air with wisps of everything sugar and spice.
Senior Editor: Hanjing Wang '24
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