There are good reasons why Mariah Carey is considered the Queen of Christmas. One of them is her punctuality. MC wasted exactly zero minutes getting into the holiday spirit in what has become her annual ritual of warning the Lambily that Christmas is coming, but they should not jump the gun and start stringing lights before Halloween is over. “Not yet,” she likes to tell them.
But, man, the minute the clock strikes 12:01 on Nov. 1, Mariah is ready to rock around the Christmas tree! In her latest reveal on Tuesday night (Nov. 31), the singer posted an elaborate 35-second video captioned with her now-familiar seasonal kick-off kicker, “It’s…… TIME!!!,” followed by pumpkin, block of ice and Christmas tree emoji and the hashtag #MariahSZN.
The accompanying clip opens with a shot of a frozen vault with a red countdown clock above it that reads “November 1 12:00.” The vault opens to reveal a bevy of Carey’s assistants dressed in a variety of scary masks using hair dryers to help Mariah escape from a giant block of ice.
Mariah being Mariah, she finishes the job by hitting one of her signature high notes, cracking the ice with a trill of “It’s time!!!!” as the block shatters and she emerges in a red and white Santa-style costume while snow falls amid a forest of Christmas trees. Her twins, 12-year-old Monroe and Moroccan, join in the festivities and dance around with a crew of revelers as Carey’s iconic holiday hit, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” officially blasts out for the first time this season.
The 1994 hit has long been a Christmas staple, but it never hit No. 1 until 2019 and has since ranked as the most popular holiday song of all time on the Billboard Holiday 100. Carey is slated to hit the road for her 13-date Merry Christmas One and All! tour on Nov. 15 in Highland, CA and ride her sleigh across North American until a Dec. 17 gig at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Watch Mariah invite the holiday season in below.