Mariah Carey, the unofficial ‘Queen of Christmas’, has been denied the right to trademark this title.

The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the star’s application because her company did not respond to another full-time Christmas singer’s opposition. The trademark would have allowed the star the legal right to stop others from using the title on music and merchandise. She also failed to trademark the abbreviation “QOC” and “Princess Christmas”.

The star famously reappears in the charts every Christmas with her 1994 track, All I Want for Christmas Is You. But Carey’s company, Lotion LLC, applied for the trademark last year and faced setbacks because another festive singer, Elizabeth Chan, filed an opposition in August to block Carey from gaining the trademark. In 2018, The New Yorker actually dubbed Chan the “Queen of Christmas”. In the article, Chan actively criticised Carey’s attempt to monetise Christmas.

In a more recent interview with Variety, Chan stated that “Christmas has come way before any of us on earth, and hopefully will be around way after any of us on earth”.

“And I feel very strongly that no one person should hold onto anything around Christmas or monopolise it in the way that Mariah seeks to in perpetuity. That’s just not the right thing to do. Christmas is for everyone. It’s meant to be shared; it’s not meant to be owned,” she added.

Monetisation of Christmas

In the interview Chan revealed that trademark filing is “daunting and it’s scary, because I love what I do.” By the end of it all, Carey’s company was slow in returning a response to Chan’s opposition in time – meaning the trademark was not granted. 

Carey is making a Christmas comeback, releasing a video of her singing in an unfathomable tone “it’s time” (for Christmas). And she is capitalising on her hit song All I Want for Christmas Is You even further with a book called The Christmas Princess – a children’s Christmas tale about a girl named ‘Little Mariah’ who loves to sing. The classic Mariah tale could be a quick Christmas cash grab.