25 YEARS AFTER a holiday classic that’s become one of the season’s most popular songs, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You has topped the Billboard charts for the first time.

Many social media users voiced their shock that the catchy song had not already jingled its way to the top.

“We did it,” Carey tweeted yesterday. 

When the singer originally released the global hit in 1994 as part of her Merry Christmas album, Billboard’s rules at the time didn’t allow it to compete on the Hot 100 chart because it was not commercially available as a single.

That changed in December 1998, when cuts off an album were welcomed to the US top songs list.

This bumped Carey’s song onto the chart for the first time on 8 January 2000.

The 2003 holiday film Love Actually helped keep the song in the collective consciousness, as streaming ensured its place in the holiday canon.

The song started appearing on the list annually from 2012, when streams were added to Billboard’s ranking metrics.

For the song’s 25th anniversary this year, Carey promoted it even harder than usual, beginning her social media drive the morning after Halloween.

New video 

She also dropped a new video for the song – which counts towards Hot 100 placement – and released the song as a stand-alone CD single for the first time.

This week the song posted 45 million streams, 27,000 digital sales and 34 million radio plays, according to Billboard.

Carey’s climb to the top marks the first time a Christmas track has claimed number one on the Hot 100 in six decades, when The Chipmunk Song reigned for four weeks in 1958-1959.

It’s Carey’s 19th number-one hit, putting her just one song behind The Beatles’ overall record of 20 top songs.

All I Want for Christmas Is You is currently Spotify’s most-streamed song in the United Kingdom, and is gaining ground in France, whose SNEP top songs chart now has it in 31st place.