Mariah Carey Opens Christmas Day NFL Games With ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ Performance

Mariah Carey delivered plenty of holiday cheer while kicking off the NFL’s Christmas Day games with a performance of her seasonal hit.

The Grammy winner, 55, opened both games — the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 p.m. ET and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET, which streamed on Netflix — with a taped rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Wednesday, December 25.  Carey stunned in a red sequin bodysuit during a rooftop performance, flanked by dancers in Nutcracker costumes.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released 30 years ago as the lead single from Carey’s first holiday album, 1994’s Merry Christmas. Three decades later, the song continues to dominate the charts and has been certified 16 times platinum, making it the highest-certified single ever performed by a female artist.

In November, Carey reflected on the song’s origin in an interview with ABC News.

“I was working on it by myself … on this little Casio keyboard and writing down words and thinking about, ‘What do I think of at Christmas? What do I love? What do I want? What do I dream of?’” she recalled. “And that’s what started it.”

While crafting the track, Carey hoped it would become a holiday classic.

“My goal was to do something timeless, so it didn’t feel like the ‘90s, which is when I wrote it,” she added.

Now, 30 years later, the song is still one of the season’s most popular tracks, which Carey attributed to the fact that she “really, truly” loves Christmas. “It’s not fake,” she emphasized.

Despite her authentic love for the holiday season, in a November interview with The New York Times Carey revealed that her 1994 Christmas album almost didn’t happen.

“I felt it was too early in my career,” she told the outlet.

Ultimately, Carey’s love for the holidays won out and she eventually became known as the queen of Christmas.

This year, Carey took her appreciation for the season up a notch by embarking on the 16-date Merry Christmas One and All Tour, which made various stops throughout the United States and Canada from November 15 through December 17. (Her 2023 holiday tour only consisted of a total of four shows in Toronto and New York City.)

“Last year we didn’t go, like, across the country,” she told ABC News. “So this year we’re doing that.”

Carey hoped that the tour would give her fans “the merriest of Christmases” while also allowing them to enjoy “being together.”

She went on to tease that new music is “on the horizon,” hinting that she had recently been “writing new songs” and spending time in the studio “working on something with a choir.”