The word “contested” shows up a lot lately in singer-songwriter Elizabeth Chan‘s world, as she made headlines this summer for going to court to try to ensure that Mariah Carey is not legally granted sole possession of the “Queen of Christmas” tag, which has also been applied to her. But there’s at least one aspect of what Chan does that will likely continue to go unchallenged. With her 12th album, “12 Months of Christmas,” coming out this week, Chan further breaks her own record for having the most all-original Christmas albums in circulation of any nationally established pop artist.
Although “most Christmas albums” is not the sort of record where Santa is keeping an official list and checking it twice — nor the Guinness Book, for that matter — it seems safe to say that no one else is even close when it comes to self-penned, all-new Yuletide collections, thanks to the one-a-year pace established by Chan, the only nationally recognized artist who does nothing but Christmas albums.
There is even a song on the new album that nods to Chan’s legal situation, as she awaits possible court action on her bid to keep Carey from legally claiming the “Queen of Christmas” moniker solely as her own. (Carey’s attempt at trademarking the phrase has also run into stiff public resistance from Darlene Love, although Queen Darlene has not taken it to court herself.)
“I never expected in a million years to be in the position I found myself this year with all the legal proceedings,” says the New York-based Chan. “On top of all of that it’s a lot of work to run a record label, be an independent artist-producer and a full-time mom. I just did the most natural thing I could do to make sense of everything I was feeling this year: I put it back into the music.” Every song on “12 Months of Christmas,” she says, “definitely captures a piece of where I was this year and how I was feeling. Since the legal cases involved both me and my daughter Noelle” (Carey is also attempting to trademark the phrases “Princess of Christmas” and “Christmas Princess,” which Chan has used for her daughter), “we recorded a duet, ‘The Santa Clause,’ as a nod to it and dedicated it to our legal team.”
On the less legal-ese lyrical side, Chan says the album’s single, “Merry Merry,” was “born from a day during recording in which I found myself happily in my safe space of writing Christmas music, where for a rare moment, I was so elated to be back in my comfort zone and in my Christmas music element. It was a much needed escape.”
Chan is very much into numerology by the dozens this time around. “Christmas is very much about the numbers, from advent calendars to the 12 Days of Christmas to December being the 12th month of the year,” she says, half-jokingly adding, “Did you know that most professional sleigh bells come in 12s or 25s? … And when I was working on my 12th album, I had jokingly said to my friends that I had an album for every month in the calendar or every hour of the day.I literally work on Christmas music every day, all year long, 12 months a year.”
Looking to avoid the monotony of just writing and releasing a random set of Christmas songs every year, Chan tries to make each new set a concept album of sorts. “My fans know that my albums are an autobiographical snapshot of where I am in my Christmas journey. My very first album ‘Naughty and Nice’ was a nod to quitting my job to pursue Christmas music. ‘Songs for Noelle’ was an album filled with songs I wanted to dedicate to my daughter Noelle and being a first-time mom. ‘If the Fates Allow’ was an album I wrote while grappling with a major illness. ‘Celebrate Me Home’ was an album about my experience as an Asian American and mother giving birth during the pandemic. My life is the source on how I curate my albums.”
On her declarations to try to keep “Queen of Christmas” and the other contested phrases trademark-free, Chan says, “there isn’t much to say as of yet, unfortunately,” but she continues to believe the law will come down on the side of the descriptions not being monopolized. “My job for the past 11 years has been to bring people together during the Christmas season – and now it’s my job to make sure Christmas continues to be shared by everyone for generations to come.”
As for where Chan would stand in the Christmas-album record books, if any were being officially kept, there isn’t much competition for her run of 12 all-original holiday albums, as very few artists record even a single Christmas collection that consists of nothing but original material and no hymns, carols or covers. When it comes to Christmas albums, period, that are all-new studio efforts and not compilations of existing material, there still aren’t many competitors even with those looser criteria.
Mannheim Steamroller has 26 Christmas albums listed in its Wikipedia discography, although just over half of those are compilations or live albums, and there is little original material involved. Among female pop solo artists, Anne Murray was a Christmas queen in her own right before she retired from making music, with eight holiday releases to her name, including compilations. Amy Grant has nine Christmas albums out, four of which are compilations. Reba McEntire has six Christmas albums, three of them compilations.
The trend of releasing albums of all-new, self-penned Christmas albums has accelerated in recent years, although the vast majority of artists who’ve done it — including, in the past few years, JD McPherson, Amanda Shires, Pistol Annies and Lori McKenna — have done it only once.
