When the Christmas season is in full swing, most people, depending on your level of Christmas spirit, consider the Grinch or Santa Claus to be the season’s biggest mascot. But for those who enjoy the holiday most for the music, Mariah Carey is the epitome of a Christmas representative. 

For freshman dance major Braylan Escoe, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” is the perfect song to put her in the holiday spirit and throughout the years has remained her favorite Christmas song.

“I think it's the first thing that I think of when I think of Christmas music and Christmas as a whole,” Escoe said. “I know that she performed in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and of course, the song that she sang was that one. It kind of just gets me in the spirit immediately.”

Although Christmas song classics are widely enjoyed, one might wonder how people don’t get sick of the songs year after year. Sure there are variations, but most consist of the same stories about a snowman and a red-nosed reindeer. The Panther set out to find how Chapman students listen to the same Christmas music each holiday season without getting tired of the same melodies.

Sophomore film production major Dylan Flores told The Panther that he prefers the classic jazzy Christmas songs by Bing Crosby or Vince Guaraldi and that for him, it’s easy to enjoy the songs each year because he’s able to reflect on his past Christmas memories.

“I (like) listening to (Christmas music) once a year and being limited to that,” Flores said. “It's like listening back to those songs again the next year, you think of the Christmas memories of the year before or even as far back to your childhood and those memories that you associate the music with.”

Even though sophomore creative producing major Maddie Harris is a fan of the Christmas classics, she said it’s nearly impossible for newer pop songs to recreate the feeling of a classic Christmas.

“It's difficult to make a good Christmas song in this day and age because a lot of pop artists will try to make their own Christmas song, but it doesn't have the same feel to it (as the classics),” Harris said. “Most Christmas music follows a certain chord progression and Christmas songs kind of have their own formula. So when a lot of pop artists try to branch out from that it starts to sound less like actual Christmas music.”

Harris said she feels as though there’s an appropriate time and place for Christmas music, and when it plays while she’s partaking in holiday festivities, she’s less likely to grow tired of it.

"If you're baking, if you're going to the mall for Christmas during the Christmas season, if you're getting a Christmas tree, that's when I feel like Christmas music makes the most sense," Harris said. "But when it's playing somewhere where there's no holiday decorations, it just starts to get tiring really fast.”

According to Statista, in 2018, only 33% of Americans said it was completely acceptable for stores to begin playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Flores agrees with this minority, saying he’s usually the one convincing his friends to listen to Christmas music at the beginning of November.

“I started playing it and they were like, ‘What the heck, it's too early, it's not even Thanksgiving yet,’” Flores said. “I'm like, ‘Well, yeah, but once Christmas comes, it goes by so fast.’ So you gotta make it last. It's okay to listen to it that early because when Christmas comes, it's gonna go by really quickly and then you're gonna wish it was longer.”