Mariah Carey Still Dominates Holiday 100 as New Christmas Classics Struggle to Break Through
Streaming, nostalgia and fan culture keep old favorites at the top, even as artists release new holiday albums and playlists drive year‑end revenue
Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You remains the defining Christmas song on the Billboard Holiday 100, a perennial anchor that shapes which new holiday hits can rise to the top. In practice, Carey’s track has long since transcended its 1994 release to become an annual cultural event, leaving little room at the summit for newer contenders.
Time’s analysis of the Holiday 100 notes that even with changes to Billboard’s criteria designed to curb stagnation, the season’s top spots are still dominated by familiar favorites. Under the current rules, songs can be removed from the Hot 100 if a track falls below No. 5 after 78 weeks, below No. 10 after 52 weeks, or below No. 25 after 26 weeks. Those thresholds, and the ongoing revival of holiday classics on streaming playlists, contribute to a continuing monopoly by older songs.
Streaming and playlist culture amplify that effect. Spotify’s Christmas Hits and Christmas Classics playlists—editorial picks that rely on algorithmic data and user behavior—have millions of saves (more than 7 million for Christmas Hits and over 3 million for Christmas Classics), helping evergreen titles rack up streams each holiday season and preserving room primarily for familiar tunes.
Beyond playlists, the holiday music industry also emphasizes revenue. Christmas music generates hundreds of millions in annual revenue for labels, with figures cited by industry observers placing the season’s market around $170 million per year. The holiday subset of the music business runs from the day after Halloween through Christmas, a window that has long shaped radio programming and catalog strategies alike. Nov. 1 marks the official kickoff for U.S. radio to begin playing Christmas music, a tradition that traces back to 1930s broadcast culture and has evolved with Internet radio channels such as SiriusXM sustaining the seasonal soundscape into the 21st century.
Modern attempts to craft a new Christmas classic include Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson, Sia, Lizzo, Gwen Stefani and others. Grande’s "Santa Tell Me" (2014) takes a contemporary approach, while Clarkson’s "Underneath the Tree" (2013) leans into retro‑pop textures that echo 1960s production. Pentatonix rose to prominence as the top holiday artist in 2022, surpassing established names such as Michael Bublé, Mariah Carey, Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby, and Justin Bieber’s "Mistletoe" remains a fixture of holiday programming. The pattern suggests that a successful new Christmas song often hinges on a dedicated fan base and the ability to tap into broader pop‑culture moments, rather than a single breakthrough hit alone.
Xavier "X" Jernigan, Spotify’s head of cultural partnerships, described the dynamic this way in a 2018 Rolling Stone interview: “If you create a Christmas classic and people love it, you will always be relevant.”
Music psychologist Alexandra Lamont of Keele University offered a complementary view on the psychology of holiday favorites. She told The Conversation that early reactions to new music are often muted, but repetition breeds liking: “When we first hear a new piece of music we tend to not like it very much. But repetition breeds liking—and repetition both within a song and through repeated listening over days, weeks and months will usually increase our liking in a fairly rapid linear way.”
Industry observers say there may still be room for a contemporary Christmas song to join the canon, but the landscape remains dominated by the Great American Songbook and the era‑spanning classics that have built year after year. The combination of nostalgia, fan‑driven promotion and the enduring listening habits around the holiday season means new entries will likely rise gradually with strong support rather than topple the established leaders overnight. For now, the holiday season on the charts remains largely anchored to the Christmas classics.