Top 10 Christmas Songs: Our Guilty Pleasures, from Mariah Carey to Tino Rossi

At midnight on 1 November, Mariah Carey once again opened the season of Christmas songs with her “It’s time” video, shot this year on a punk-rock set. The signal is well known: until Christmas, the same choruses will play in the shops, in the cars and along the aisles of the markets, and we will all pretend to put up with them. We know them by heart, we sing them in the shower and we have firm opinions on the best version. This top 10 owns up to those guilty pleasures: for each song, its official video, its records and its backstory, sometimes less light-hearted than it seems. Seven hits from the United States and the United Kingdom, three French songs, and a common thread that surprised us: several waited decades before their crowning in the charts.

Mariah Carey, queen of Christmas songs (without the official title)

1. All I Want for Christmas Is You, Mariah Carey (1994)

It all began on 29 October 1994, with the album Merry Christmas. Mariah Carey wrote the song with Walter Afanasieff, and the track became a holiday classic straight away. Yet the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 only came on 21 December 2019, twenty-five years after its release. Since 2020, it has climbed back there every Christmas, and as of 3 January 2026 it totals 22 weeks at the top, a record for a chart created in 1958.

In France, the ritual is the same. The song reached number one in the Top Singles in December 2018, then again in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 3.63 million streams in seven days. In mid-December 2024, it sat at number 20 with close to 2.2 million plays over the week, and we have no doubt it will climb again in the coming weeks.

The guilty pleasure lies in a ritual: every 1 November at midnight, Mariah Carey posts an “It’s time” video that ends Halloween and launches the holiday season. All she lacks is an official title. In November 2022, her application to register the trademark “Queen of Christmas” was rejected in the United States, after opposition from another Christmas singer, Elizabeth Chan. A queen without a crown, but with the numbers.

The hits that waited decades for their turn

Mariah Carey is not an isolated case. Three other songs in this top waited 39, 65 and 50 years before their crowning in the charts. The best Christmas songs are not the ones that storm the charts on release, they are the ones we put on again every year.

2. Last Christmas, Wham! (1984)

George Michael alone wrote, composed and produced Last Christmas, released in December 1984. In the United Kingdom, the single stalled at number two: the Christmas number one went to Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid, on which George Michael also sings. Wham! donated their royalties to the fight against famine in Ethiopia, the cause of Band Aid. The video was shot in late November 1984 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, a resort chosen for its snow cover, and a monument to Wham! was unveiled there for the 40th anniversary of the shoot.

The comeback came late. Last Christmas landed its first UK Christmas Number 1 in 2023, 39 years after its release, with 13.3 million streams in Christmas week. In 2024, it did it again and became the first song to take the spot two years running. In France, it was number two in the Top Singles in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 2.7 million streams, just behind Mariah Carey.

3. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Brenda Lee (1958)

Brenda Lee was 13 when she recorded this song by Johnny Marks, already the author of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The song came out in 1958 and lived its life as a radio classic for six decades. In December 2023, it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, 65 years after its release: the longest climb to the top, and Brenda Lee, at 78, became the oldest artist to lead the chart. The official video dates from that same year, 2023: Brenda Lee, aged 78, in front of a Christmas tree, over her 13-year-old voice.

In the United Kingdom, its best position is number 3, in the chart for the week of 26 December 2025 to 1 January 2026. In France, it held number 7 in the Top Singles in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 2.1 million streams.

4. Feliz Navidad, José Feliciano (1970)

The Puerto Rican singer and guitarist José Feliciano wrote and recorded Feliz Navidad in 1970, at the RCA studios in Los Angeles, far from his family. He has said he felt very lonely at the time. The result is a bilingual chorus in Spanish and English, on a very short lyric that anyone can sing along to from the first listen. The Billboard Hot 100 only welcomed it in January 2017, and its first top 10 dates from December 2020, fifty years after its release.

The most recent accolade is institutional: in 2026, the song was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Recording Registry, with the announcement on 14 May 2026. In France, it was number 46 in the Top Singles in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 1.12 million streams.

Jingle Bell Rock and Vive le vent: sleigh bells in your head

These two songs descend from the same ancestor, Jingle Bells, written by James Lord Pierpont and published in 1857 under the title One Horse Open Sleigh. One turned it into rock, the other into French.

5. Jingle Bell Rock, Bobby Helms (1957)

The country singer Bobby Helms recorded Jingle Bell Rock in 1957 for the Decca label. The credits name two writers, Joseph Carleton Beal and James Ross Boothe. Bobby Helms and his guitarist Hank Garland maintained until their deaths that they had rewritten the melody and the bridge of the song, without ever getting a credit: a claim never settled. The song owes a good part of its second life to the cinema, with the Plastics’ routine at the school talent show in Mean Girls (2004), and Lindsay Lohan recorded her own version in 2022 for the film Falling for Christmas. In France, it was number 35 in the Top Singles in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 1.32 million streams.

6. Vive le vent, lyrics by Francis Blanche (1948)

In 1948, Francis Blanche wrote the French lyrics of Jingle Bells, under the title Vive le vent (“long live the wind”). He did not translate: the sleigh disappears, and the words speak of Christmas memories, of an old man walking down to the village and of the winter wind whistling through the tall green fir trees. This is the version every French child learns at school, and the one Dalida recorded in 1960. A guilty pleasure unlike the others: everyone knows the chorus and nobody gets to the end of the second verse.

The hot chocolate crooners: Michael Bublé and Bing Crosby

7. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Michael Bublé (2011)

The song was written in 1951 by Meredith Willson, but it is Michael Bublé’s version we have been hearing in the aisles for fifteen years. It opens his album Christmas, released in October 2011, which spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 between late 2011 and early 2012 and was credited with 7.47 million album-equivalent units in the United States as of November 2024. In France, the song was number 8 in the Top Singles in the week of 23 to 29 December 2022, with 2.02 million streams.

Bublé shares with Mariah Carey the starring role in the early-November thawing meme, in which the crooner emerges from his block of ice for the season. Asked about the meme on British television in 2018, he let slip an “Oh, for God’s sake” that did the rounds on social media. He still released an official video for the song, to watch with a hot chocolate.

8. White Christmas, Bing Crosby (1942)

Irving Berlin wrote White Christmas for the film Holiday Inn (1942), which earned the song the Oscar for best original song. Bing Crosby recorded it on 29 May 1942, in 18 minutes. It is the best-selling Christmas song in the world: at least 50 million copies of the single for Crosby’s version, and more than 100 million across all versions. France adopted it under the title Noël blanc, with French lyrics by Francis Blanche, him again, in the voice of Tino Rossi. The bridge between the two halves of this top therefore runs through the same man.

The French Christmas songs we still sing at the top of our lungs

9. Petit Papa Noël, Tino Rossi (1946)

The gentlest song in the repertoire was born in the middle of the war. In 1944, at the Odéon in Marseille, the revue Ça reviendra had a child sing to ask Father Christmas for the return of his father, a prisoner in Germany. For Tino Rossi, the lyrics of Petit Papa Noël (“little Father Christmas”) by Raymond Vincy were rewritten without the war, to the music of Henri Martinet, and the singer performed it in 1946 in the film Destins by Richard Pottier. The result is the best-selling single in France, at around 5.7 million copies.

Tino Rossi was born on 29 April 1907 in Ajaccio, and his voice remains the one we associate with the song, despite the covers by Dalida, Céline Dion and Garou. Guilty pleasure or not, it is the song parents sing under their breath on the evening of the 24th.

10. Petit garçon, Garou and Ryan (2014)

The song comes from the United States: Old Toy Trains, written in 1967 by Roger Miller for his son. Graeme Allwright wrote the French lyrics in the late 1960s, and Petit garçon (“little boy”) made its way into family evenings, youth clubs and nursery school classes. In 2014, Garou, patron of the Téléthon, covered it as a duet with the young Ryan, with the proceeds of the single going to the AFM. The song appears on It’s Magic!, his album of Christmas covers with a blues twist released in late November 2014. The red and white coat, the little bells, the toys in the slippers: we have nothing against a little sweetness to close the list.

What is the best-selling Christmas song?

The answer depends on what we count. In physical sales, White Christmas leads worldwide and Petit Papa Noël in France. In streaming, the records are more recent and always dated.

At the Christmas markets, the same choruses

To carry on with the traditions of the Christmas markets, two detours take on a special meaning after this read: the Marseille Christmas market, in the city where Petit Papa Noël was born, and the Ajaccio Christmas market, Tino Rossi’s home town. And if you prefer the songs of early December, the Saint Nicholas song has its own article.