Some people can’t stand the spirit of the holidays, apparently.
We’re barely a week into November and already Mariah Carey and her immortal Christmas song “All I Want for Christmas is You” is already conquering the airwaves, streaming platforms, and the playlists of every indoor establishment you’ll ever enter — save for one place.
Stoneleigh P, a bar in Dallas, Texas caused a stir among the songstress’ fans after putting a ban on patrons playing the classic Christmas tune in the jukebox until December 1, at which point it can only be played once a night. Twitter user @rkylesmith caught a photo of the unwelcome memorandum:
It’s been put up three years now, maybe four, every holiday season we hear the song so much when you get alcohol involved,” Stoneleigh P’s general manager Laura Garrison told The Washington Post. In the years that it has been posted, the ban has become a running joke among the bar’s regulars: ““It’s like a family inside joke that went viral.”
Garrison also clarified that the management has nothing against Carey; only that the song gets overplayed as the Christmas season slowly rolls in and that it creeps in earlier each year. “I think this year it was played in September,” she added.
As more fans sarcastically fume over the ban, news eventually reached Carey herself. Responding to a retweet that suggested the bar was waging “a war on Christmas,” the Queen of Christmas tweeted an image of herself clad in battle armor and encircled with flames.
Carey might actually be dead-serious in declaring every Christmas henceforth as #MariahSZN, as proven by an ominous video on Twitter posted exactly at midnight of November 1 where she smashes pumpkin lanterns then proclaims: “It’s time.”
“Imagine owning a whole holiday,” one fan tweeted.
Carey, who gifted the world with “All I Want for Christmas is You” back in 1994, have succeeded in making the song an annual Christmas anthem. It has become the longest-running holiday number-one song with a five-week record, and is the only song in history to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart in more than two different years, reigning in its debut year and again in 2019, 25 years later.
Fun fact: in Asia, Carey’s holiday hit is the third best-selling song by a non-Asian artist of all time — probably thanks to Philippine malls.
This year doesn’t look to be any different. Barely a week into November, and “All I Want for Christmas is You” is already creeping up streaming charts, standing at the 106th spot on Spotify’s Global Charts and 41st in Apple Music’s Top 100 as of November 3. Let’s see how it fares when we kick off the actual month of Christmas.
