Rumors of summer’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, so sayeth our queen and chief meteorologist Mariah Carey. It’s easy to get super excited about wall-to-wall merrymaking from the elusive chanteuse the minute the calendar flips from August to September. It’s almost fall, which means it’s almost sweater-weather, which means it’s almost decorative gourde season ,which means it’s almost sexy ghost season, all of which means we are so close to Mariah Carey Season. Close, but not there yet, according to the diva who invented festivity. Mariah Carey has heard your calls about breaking out the tinsel and cranking up the Christmas Spotify and while warm temperatures may be Vanishing, Mariah wants us to know that the holidays, like Love, Takes Time.
Fans have been quick to consult with Mariah for permission to get festive but, at least for now, the diva is advising patience in a move that has literally stopped the rotation of the planet around the sun.
Calendar: It’s fall!
Mariah Carey: ABSOLUTELY not.
Mariah Carey looked at Elsa from Frozen and was like, “Nope, not on my watch. Try again, hon.”
As any Farmer’s Almanac worth its salt will tell you it is officially Hot Girl Summer until midnight on the day after Beyoncé’s birthday, after such time it’s Mariah Carey Season until she decides it’s not anymore. Last year Mariah was singing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from roughly October 31st until February 9th, and we thank her. After Mariah declares Mariah Carey Season to be over, all calendars switch over to Hello, It’s Wintah and then Didn’t We Used to Have a Springtime Or Something? followed by Hot Girl Summer once again. This has always been the case since the beginning of time when the Glitter Runes were first sent down from the heavens. So, it’s striking that Mariah is holding off the holiday spirit for now.
Even Mariah’s celebrity friends cannot convince her to officially begin Mariah Carey season. Katharine McPhee, a Pulitzer Prize winner for Smash, uploaded a video of herself lip-syncing to Mariah’s Christmas classic and asked, “Is it time?” This, by the way, is how all temporal matters should be governed. Is it happy hour? Is it tomorrow yet? Is it your birthday? We don’t know until Mariah says so. True story: the reason that Natasha Lyonne’s character on Russian Doll kept reliving the same day was because Mariah wanted her to. And we thank her. But, Mariah giveth and she withholdeth: she quoted McPhee’s tweet and stuck to the party line. Mariah has not seen her shadow which means it’s six more weeks of not winter.
I, honestly, don’t know how to handle this. I have already bought a Christmas tree and school children are selling wrapping paper through various multi-level marketing schemes all over the land. All signs point to festive. Earlier this month, music writer Hugh McIntyre posted on Twitter that you can listen to “All I Want for Christmas” “anytime you want.” Mariah, benevolent social media goddess, pushed back with a tweet of her own, saying that she prefers to wait until after Thanksgiving.
Throw on a jacket cuz this news is chilling! This is the kind of statement that, from a less assured source, would send global markets into tailspin. Papers worldwide would read “Mariah Holds Christmas Hostage.” But if the performer who invented both the tankini and the rainbow with 1999’s album Rainbow says we should cool our jets and stay warm for a few more weeks, who are we to argue. As the Glitter runes predicted: Winter is coming… but not yet!