Why the Holiday Music Season is Getting Longer and Longer

Christmas is only technically one day of the year. December 25. That’s when everyone gets work off and they wake up early opening presents from under a decorated tree while some classic movie like Elf, Love Actually, The Santa Claus, or Die Hard plays on the TV.

However, as far back as 1780 — the furthest point to when the lyrics of the classic English Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” can be traced — the holiday has been celebrated much longer than that.

In that ditty, your true love delivers 12 presents. One for each day of Christmas. Well, in 2024, your true love should be delivering 59 presents because at this point in history, Christmas music is on repeat for as long as 50 days.

According to Chartmetric’s data, spikes in listening for Christmas hits like Mariah Carey’s holiday essential, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” begin as early as November 1 and sustain their holiday-cheer-fueled dominance until January 2.

“Dominance” is not hyperbole, either. Every year around the holidays, Carey’s Spotify monthly listeners explode. At the time of writing, she has 62.8 million Spotify monthly listeners, putting her at #24 throughout the entire DSP (that puts her ahead of Beyoncé). But just a few weeks ago at the beginning of October, she had 27 million. Plus, being at the beginning of December, this is not the highest peak in her yearly trend. Last year at the beginning of October she had 25.7 million listeners, then by the beginning of January, she was at 86.1 million.

Furthermore, the data shows that these swells are getting bigger and bigger every year. In 2021 she jumped from 16.1 million to 62.2 million from the beginning of October to the beginning of January. Then in 2022, she jumped from 19.5 to 72.3 million in the same time frame, all built on her holiday smash single. 

Diving further into streaming trends, it appears the jumps are bigger because holiday season streaming is starting earlier every year. In 2022, significant daily percent change for Mariah reached over 2% on November 12, then in 2023 it was November 11, and this year it was November 9. Year by year, day by day, the Christmas peak is happening sooner and sooner. 

Such mass appeal demonstrates how Christmas is different from other holidays. First of all, the holiday is fully integrated into popular culture: movies, food, and, of course, music. 

Where music from other holidays is essentially prayer put to song, Christmas music has its own pop value. Hence why the idea of the best-selling female artist in history, Mariah Carey, making a Christmas song isn’t just accepted. It’s celebrated. 

Artists have been making Christmas albums for decades. Mariah Carey is the most notable, but other huge pop stars like Michael Bublé and Ariana Grande have lent their voices to holiday standards. Smaller artists like She & Him and Aimee Mann have also joined in on the holiday cheer, and classic artists like Johnny Cash and Ray Charles have their own collections of Christmas songs as well.

There are even albums outside the singer/songwriter sound with which Christmas music is generally associated. The prominent electronic artist, Kaskade, produced four-on-the-floor laden versions of “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls” for his 2017 album Kaskade Christmas (which had a deluxe version out in time for next year’s holiday season) and Dr. Dre’s iconic record label, Death Row Records, produced a Christmas rap album called Christmas On Death Row in 1996.

With Christmas music being so widespread, everyone can find their soundtrack as soon as the weather starts cooling down. In looking at Spotify’s Christmas Hits playlist, the first five songs capture the eclectic nature of the holiday’s soundtrack. Carey’s hit (1994) is at the top, then Brenda Lee’s 1964 doo-wop Christmas tune, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” is next, followed by the even older jazz standard “Jingle Bell Rock” (1957). But by #4 things are back in modern-ish times with “Last Christmas” (1984) by the 80s stalwarts, Wham!, and then #5 is Ariana Grande’s pop-ready “Santa Tell Me” (2014). 

Those five songs represent almost 60 years of music, and all five are being played with nearly the same frequency. In both 2022 and 2023, all five songs saw a spike in listenership on Spotify the week of November 7. In 2022 “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was streamed 8.3 million more times than the previous week, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” went up 4.1 million, “Jingle Bell Rock” went up by 3.8 million, “Last Christmas” went up by 5.1 million, and “Santa Tell Me” went up by 3.8 million.

These Christmas classics are driving overall listenership for their artists well. In looking at the six artists with the greatest increase in Spotify monthly listeners over the past 28 days, all of them are staples of holiday playlists. Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6 are Lee, Carey, Wham!, and Helms, no doubt coasting to the sky alongside Santa’s sleigh because of their aforementioned hits. 

4 and 5 are Michael Bublé and Dean Martin, two titans of the Great American Songbook. Bublé has been a Christmas stalwart since the release of his aptly-titled album, Christmas, in 2011, and now looking at his Spotify page all five popular songs are from that album including “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” with over 1 billion plays. Martin, who made his name in the Rat Pack alongside fellow famous crooner Frank Sinatra, is similarly displayed with five Christmas songs up front, three of which stem from his 1959 album, A Winter Romance, while all five clear 150 million streams.

Overall, whether it’s a classic tune or a newer pop rendition, everyone has their preferred Christmas soundtrack and they all flock to it at the start of November. Even the smaller artists like She & Him, and the less traditional-sounding Christmas albums from Kaskade and Death Row spike near the same time every year.

Listenership uniformly drops after New Year’s Eve as well, but because these songs have a certain amount of pop value, they all have individual trends before the next holiday season. Where most of the world gets sick of these songs when the Christmas decorations come down, some people keep listening all year long, and once each hits their low point, the streams continue to grow all the way until November.

This year,  “All I Want For Christmas Is You” hit that low point of daily stream count change the week of May 19 with 398.2k Spotify streams. “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” was at its lowest on May 19 as well with 153.4k, “Jingle Bell Rock” lasted a bit longer until Jun 2 with 150.2k, “Santa Tell Me” dropped to 249.2k on June 30, and “Last Christmas” had the longest drop before the streams went back up, hitting 670k on July 14 before swinging back up to the present holiday season. 

Clearly some people never want Christmas to end, and as soon as it gets hot more and more holiday revelers long for the cold weather and the celebratory atmosphere that comes with it.

The fact that these songs still have hundreds of thousands of plays at the opposite point of the year demonstrates these trends are organic, but even at the height of the holidays, Spotify doesn't have to feed them to listeners with the algorithm. 

The five core songs in this article are all on Spotify’s Christmas Hits playlist which currently has 6.2 million followers. They’re also on other popular Christmas playlists like Christmas Pop with 2.4 million and Christmas is Coming with 1.1 million. But they’ve been on these playlists for years — anywhere from an average of 680 days to 2,108 days.

To boot, almost half of the 95 songs on Christmas Hits stay there for at least a year on average. So, even if someone isn’t a fan of the top five on the list, chances are a few of the other 90 bring back warm memories of opening presents with a glass of egg nog.

Plus, in looking at Chartmetric’s coinciding data on playlist reach and playlist count, the playlist reach is what spikes with the holidays. Not the count. So, while these major Christmas playlists remain largely unchanged, as soon as everyone feels the spirit, they press play on their favorites. 

Christmas is a unique holiday in its relationship with music. With so much of it out there from so many different eras and genres, every fan of music can appreciate at least one tune regardless of the season. But one thing that is sure is this music is being enjoyed year-round. So even though November through January is when Christmas music is on repeat, and even though Christmas is technically only one day, Christmas can last as long as anyone wants.

Visualizations by Sarah Kloboves; Cover image by Crasianne Tirado.