As the weather outside gets frightful (or at least the lines at the mall…), the Holiday Songs chart makes its annual return to Billboard.com.
Like the Billboard Hot 100, but solely for yuletide tracks (of all eras), Holiday Songs ranks the most popular seasonal songs, according to all-format audience impressions measured by Nielsen BDS, sales data compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and streaming activity data from online music sources tracked by BDS.
Mariah Carey's 1994 classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You" tops the inaugural chart this season. (The carol led the list for four of the five weeks in which the tally was tabulated a year ago.) "Christmas" logged 20 million in radio audience in the current chart's tracking week, ranking at No. 6 on the Holiday Airplay ranking. It rules the Holiday Digital Songs chart with 27,000 downloads sold (up 112%).
While the overall chart points for "Christmas" leave it shy of the Hot 100's top 50 this week, should the song accrue enough points in upcoming weeks to rank in the Hot 100's upper half, it, or any holiday title regardless of age that reaches such a points level, would be eligible to rank on the Hot 100. Hot 100 rules were adjusted at the beginning of the 2012 chart year to include all titles regardless of age should they rank in the top 50.
