In WaPo, Rachel Beckman tracks the magical appeal of Mariah Carey’s 1994 holiday hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” As I noted last year, I grew to love this song, based on a cover version by My Chemical Romance and the song’s appearance in Love Actually.
As a 12-year-old Jewish girl, Beckman resisted the siren call of Mariah back in ‘94, but gradually succumbed:
…after a few days of Mariah immersion, the song sucked us into its irresistible fairy tale world, where love trumps material possessions. A place where we plead, “Santa won’t you bring me the one I really need?/Won’t you please bring my baby to me?”
We started getting excited to hear those slow, opening bars of piano and Mariah’s elastic vocals, humming and tapping our hands on our laps with the beat. (The dancing started shortly thereafter.)
In the video, Mariah goes sledding, flirts with Santa and plays with a puppy under a Christmas tree in front of a roaring fire. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is pure, distilled holiday music joy, like a shot of eggnog sipped under the mistletoe (or what I imagined that it was like — I’d never tasted the stuff). Without knowing it, Ms. Scary had struck a blow for ecumenical harmony, helped heal a millennia-old rift in Judeo-Christian history. They should have blasted the song over the loudspeakers at the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis.
Tags: Mariah Carey, All I Want for Christmas Is You, Christmas music
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Mariah Carey » Have a Merry Mariah Says:
[...] The Pop View wrote an interesting post today on Have a Merry MariahHere’s a quick excerpt In WaPo, Rachel Beckman tracks the magical appeal of Mariah Carey’s 1994 holiday hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” As I noted last year, I grew to love this song, based on a cover version by My Chemical Romance and the song’s appearance in Love Actually. As a 12-year-old Jewish girl, Beckman resisted the siren call of Mariah back in ‘94, but gradually succumbed: …after a few days of Mariah immersion, the song sucked us into its irresistible fairy tale world, where love trumps material [...]