Mariah Carey.Photo: ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty
“I don’t do years,“Mariah Careylikes to say. “Instead I live Christmastime to Christmastime.”
Who can argue with her? The icon — with five Grammys, 19 No. 1 hits and more than 200 million records sold under her built — has long loved the holiday, which brought her solace during her troubled childhood, she wrote in her memoirThe Meaning of Mariah Carey.
The 52-year-old remained festive as an adult, and this year, the Carey household is extra festive. Twenty-seven years after “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” she’s back with another holiday single, “Fall in Love at Christmas.”
Speaking to PEOPLE, Carey, 52, gave some tips for how best to “spread some holiday cheer, darling.”
“Christmastime really is my favorite part of the year,” Carey — the undisputed Queen of Christmas tells PEOPLE. “But it’s not like, ‘Oh, I only emerge from the sea at Christmastime.’ "
She adds with a laugh, “But I live for that stuff, and it makes me laugh.”
With her childrenMoroccanandMonroenow 10 years old, Carey says the family traditions are not changing.
Carey says her sense of festive actually comes from her own mother. “I have to say that whatever disagreements she and I have ever had, I definitely got that [holiday spirit] from her,” she admits. “She would be making some sort of Norwegian mulled wine, and her eccentric friends would sing Christmas carols. And she was into it.”
Her father, however, was not. “My dad was very much the strict disciplinarian, the engineer,” she explains. “I remember when I went to his house one Christmas, I was like, ‘Why doesn’t he have a tree?’ It’s not for everybody, you know? Most rational people will tell you it’s not realistic.”
Here are a few holiday Do’s and Don’ts from the Queen of Christmas herself. Starting with one major don’t for a holiday party: “Bleak people cannot come.”
DO: Mistletoe
DON’T: Christmas decorations in October (“Only if you’re under duress,” she says.)
DO: Artificial Christmas trees: “Unfortunately we kind of have to deal with that now because we don’t wanna kill all the trees in the land,” she says.
DON’T: “Ugly” Christmas sweaters
DO: Milk and cookies for Santa
MAYBE A DON’T? Homemade tinsel. “I don’t know what that is,” she says.
For more from Mariah Carey and the holiday season, grab a copy ofPEOPLEon newsstands Friday.
source: people.com
