All I want for Christmas … is cash
It’s that time of year again, when „Fairytale of New York“ and „Last Christmas“ fight for the crown, which of the two is once again the most popular Christmas song in Europe. The Pogues‘ quirky song just happens to have something to do with Christmas, and the Wham tearjerker was originally supposed to be about Easter. In the U.S., this competition has long been decided: not a year goes by without Mariah Carey rocking the charts with „All I want for Christmas“ and making the cash registers ring – mainly her own. And she’s capitalizing on her hit even more by just releasing a book called The Christmas Princess – a children’s Christmas tale about a girl named ‚Little Mariah‘ who loves to sing.
So, what does this have to do with our Christmas blog this year?
Well, all this was not enough for Mrs. Carey and so she started an attempt through her production company Lotion LLC to register the signs „Queen of Christmas“ as well as „Princess Christmas“ and „QOC“ (short for Queen of Christmas) as a trademark. By a hair with success, had it not been for Elisabeth Chan, who had already been called „Queen of Christmas“ by The New Yorker in 2018 and could find no Christmas pleasure at all in the monopolization of this term for Mrs. Carey.
„I’m a firm believer that no person should hold or monopolize anything around Christmas in the way that Mariah aspires to in the long run,“ Chan said in an interview with Variety. „That’s just not the right thing to do. Christmas is for everybody. It is meant to be shared; it is not meant to be owned.“
„And it’s not just about the music business,“ she continued. „It’s trying to protect the name in every way possible – clothing, spirits, masks, dog collars – it’s all there. If you knit a ‚Queen of Christmas‘ sweater, you should be able to sell it on Etsy to someone else so they can buy it for their grandma. It’s crazy – it would have that breadth of registry.“
Well, dog collars with „Queen of Christmas“ may be under the Christmas tree again this year for the little darling, because upon Mrs. Chan’s opposition, trademark registration was denied by the USPTO. Was the spirit of Christmas on hand? Perhaps, Carey simply refrained from responding to the opposition within the deadline.
In this sense: Merry Christmas (whether with the Pogues, Wham or Mariah Carey) and a 2023 perhaps this time without bad surprises.