All we want for Christmas is…the same old Christmas hits.

This would certainly explain why Mariah Carey returned to number 1 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 with her 1994 holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, knocking none other than Adele (“Easy on Me”) from the first place. . It’s the third year in a row that the Queen of Christmas has reigned at the top of the charts with her seasonal juggernaut.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” topped a Top 10 that also included 1958’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee (No. 2), 1957’s “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms ( No. 4), Burl Ives’ 1964 “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (No. 5), Andy Williams’ 1963 “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (No. 7), and 1984’s “Last Christmas” of Wham! (No. 9). And just outside the Top 10 is José Feliciano’s 1970 chestnut “Feliz Navidad” at No. 11.

That makes Carey’s 27-year-old Tinsel the baby of the bunch among beloved holiday originals that date back to the ’50s. Obviously, when it comes to Christmas hit songs, the oldies are the goodies.

“It tends to be pretty much driven by songs that have been out for decades,” said Gary Trust, Billboard’s senior chart manager. “With pop music, the general angle is that the newer the song, the cooler it is. It’s a bit of the opposite with holiday music, where the older the song, it’s probably a bit longer. ahead because holiday music really seems like comfort food, seems like it’s all about nostalgia and family memories. So even if a new song comes over the holidays, that’s really good, it’s really gonna take years , maybe decades to match the resonance of an older song.

Indeed, while there have been some relatively minor hits – including Justin Bieber’s 2011 ditty “Mistletoe”, Kelly Clarkson’s 2013 bop “Underneath the Tree” and Ariana Grande in 2014 – there hasn’t been another certified holiday classic since ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You.’

Although the song was a radio hit right away, the streaming boom helped catapult “All I Want” to No. 1 25 years after its release. And the seasonal surge in streaming has wrought a bit of Christmas magic on other classics, too. “The reason we’re seeing all of these songs so well is because they’re being delivered incredibly well,” Trust said. “There are a lot of streaming services that have so many dedicated holiday music playlists.”

But those playlists don’t always make room at the Inn for new Christmas Originals, giving them less exposure. “Playlist programmers on major streaming services have a say in what the most popular songs will be, and they pretty much stick to the classics,” Trust said. “When you program this music, whether on the radio or on streaming services, you may have 100 years of music to choose from. So if you’re going to put something fairly new against Brenda Lee and Bobby Helms and Burl Ives, it better be good.

While some artists – such as Pentatonix, Michael Bublé and Josh Groban – have had success with Christmas albums recently, they have relied more on covering familiar favorites than creating new ones. But Carey herself co-wrote “All I Want” with Walter Afanasieff.

“You go back to 1994, and very few artists were releasing new, original holiday music back then,” Trust said. “It was kind of accepted that if you were going to do holiday music, you put on covers. That tended to be how it worked. And Mariah came along and she put out a brand new song.

Now, though, there are other Christmas originals — from Ed Sheeran and Elton John’s duet “Merry Christmas” to Clarkson’s recent single “Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)” — that may not have not stand a real chance of one day joining the ranks of the great holiday standards.

“There’s so much great original holiday music out there, but how big of an audience is it?” says Trust. “The competition is so big because you’re dealing with so many decades of so many classics. That’s a lot to cut.