Today (Sunday) the weather sucked. It was raining when I woke up, still raining when my family got to church, and raining even harder when we got out of church. As we got in the car, my dad connected his phone to Bluetooth and turned on Spotify. A Christmas playlist came on and started to play a classic carol: something quiet and slow. I took one look at the pouring rain out the window and said, “Dad, on a day like this, this is what you want to play?” Dad laughed and clicked around until he found something more upbeat.

As we drove home, with [thankfully] the first of many Christmas songs I’ll hear in the next four weeks playing, a certain singer’s recent posts celebrating the end of Halloween and the coming of Christmas came to mind.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is the credit score of music. I was shocked when I learned a while ago that credit scores, that gatekeeping status symbol that can prevent you from buying a house, acquiring a car note, or qualifying for insurance, was released onto the world in 1989. I was similarly shocked when I discovered that “All I Want for Christmas,” a song that’s been inescapable from the fourth Friday of November to Christmas for as long as I’ve been alive, is only 5 years older than my 23 years.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is the credit score of music. I was shocked when I learned a while ago that credit scores, that gatekeeping status symbol that can prevent you from buying a house, acquiring a car note, or qualifying for insurance, was released onto the world in 1989. I was similarly shocked when I discovered that “All I Want for Christmas,” a song that’s been inescapable from the fourth Friday of November to Christmas for as long as I’ve been alive, is only 5 years older than my 23 years.

What made “All I Want for Christmas” such a runaway hit?

First, its harmlessness. “Corporate pop” is a pejorative usually tacked on to music seen as toothless or “selling out,” the kind of lyric-light, but catchy song that makes you think of smiling people strolling down the street with Product X in their hands. If you’ve heard it in a car commercial, then it’s probably been accused of being corporate pop. Songs like SHAED’s “Trampoline,” Harry Styles’ “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” Justin Timberlake’s “CAN’T STOP THE FEELING!”, Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey” and, of course, “All I Want for Christmas” are all songs that could be clumped under the corporate pop umbrella.

Second, its singer. Mariah Carey is the 11th-best selling musician of all time. Between her own fame and the power of a giant record label behind her, success was a guarantee, but I doubt even Carey herself knew how much of an icon she had on her hands when she stepped in the recording booth.

Third, and the reason not enough people think about? It’s happy.

“Duh, it’s happy!” you might be thinking. “It’s a Christmas song.” To that, I say: happy holidays aren’t always happy.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized: not everybody can get into the Christmas cheer, and for justifiable reasons. For a lot of people, holiday season is a jab in the fresh wound of having loved ones no longer with them. For others, it means forced contact with family they avoid the other 11 months of the year. For low-income families, having to skimp on presents or opt out of festivities completely is a painful reminder of their poverty. For a long time, it was believed that suicide rates rose significantly during the holidays, though organizations like the CDC have pushed back against this narrative in recent years.

And, when you’re already in the holiday dumps, having to hear slow and melancholy songs like “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” or “Silent Night” for a month straight is like lemon juice squeezed onto a gaping cut. But, like the Kool-Aid Man careening through a wall to deliver fruit-flavored goodness, in barges Mariah Carey, crooning how she wants you to make her wish come true and how all she wants for Christmas is yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuu.

Am I overthinking this? No, no I’m not. Considering Time magazine wrote an entire article outlining the various ways “All I Want for Christmas” became a holiday banger, I’m underthinking this. All the same, I send a message to anybody with holiday blues, a message to myself as well, considering the number of Christmases I’ve shuffled rather than ran downstairs on Christmas morning: you’ll be OK.

So crank that Mariah, warm up that hot chocolate and write up those Christmas lists. And remember, there are worse songs that could be played endlessly every Christmas season.

*shudder*