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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series?

On today's show,

The Holidays are upon us,

which means you are no doubt buried in a snowdrift of Christmas music,

which, of course,

means you are hearing a whole lot

of one particular song.

Well, yes, but really, I was thinking more of...

Have a holly jolly Christmas.

And in case you didn't hear...

Certainly that song is everywhere, but...

Oh, good gravy.

Please make it stop.

All of these songs are definitely omnipresent at this time of year.

But statistically speaking, no song in the holiday music canon is more played in the late 2010s than this now standard.

That, of course, is all I want for Christmas is you, sung, co-written, co-produced, and made immortal by Mariah Carey,

one of the top recording artists in Billboard Chart History.

And, as of last week, this became the number one song in America in its 25th anniversary year.

Recorded in 1994, Carrie's Christmas isn't just the highest charting holiday hit of the 21st century.

It's the highest charting since 1958, the year of the Hot 100's birth. That Christmas, 61 years ago, was the last time America's flagship chart was topped by a holiday song, which, by the way, was a more whimsical duty.

...