Mariah Carey Confirmed to Perform at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

The holiday season is almost upon us, and there’s absolutely no shortage of ways for fans to get into the spirit. One of the most ubiquitous — and possibly polarizing — might be Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, a song that has become almost synonymous with festivity towards Christmas. Carey has been no stranger to sharing the song in creative ways, even if they occur earlier and earlier in the year. This year, that will include Carey partnering with another holiday touchstone, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. As Carey revealed on social media on Friday, she will be performing “All I Want For Christmas Is You” at the tail end of the 2022 parade, opening for the grand arrival of Santa Claus.

“My childhood dream is coming to life!” Carey’s Instagram post reads. “I’m going to be opening for the one and only, SANTA CLAUS 🎅🏼, at this year’s @macys Thanksgiving day parade! 🎄🎉💫 Tune in on Thanksgiving Day @NBC! 💖☃️ #macysparade“

Who wrote “All I Want For Christmas Is You”?

The song was written by Carey and co-producer Walter Afansieff, and was the highlight of Carey’s first holiday album, 1994’s Merry Christmas. As Afansieff 

“20 years ago, Christmas music and Christmas albums by artists weren’t the big deal that they are today,” Afanasieff told Billboard back in 2014. “Back then, you didn’t have a lot of artists with Christmas albums; It wasn’t a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs. So we were going to release it as kind of an everyday, ‘hey, you know, we’re putting out a Christmas album. No big deal.’ To think of it as a single that’s going to No. 1, that’s going to drive an album…we didn’t have an inkling of that. That’s not what the time was. That’s what made it such a modern phenomenon: Because it’s not like “White Christmas” or “Jingle Bells” – the song doesn’t have any of those traditional elements, but it became a huge pop hit.”

“It’s not like no one writes Christmas songs-everyone is trying to get a Christmas song,” Afanasieff said elsewhere in the interview. “But for whatever reason “All I Want For Christmas Is You” just became that song. It’s kind of something you never would have thought, and you can’t really explain why, and we feel lucky, because it was the last major song to enter that Christmas canon, and then the door slammed shut. It just closed.”

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade will air on Thursday, November 24th at 9am local time on NBC.