List: America’s Top Christmas Songs 2023

P1 Media Group's annual Christmas Music Research has been released.

The company surveyed radio listeners nationwide likely to listen to an all-Christmas music radio station during the holiday season. It tested the appeal of the 40 most-played and 40 most-streamed Christmas songs from the 2022 Holiday Season, a total of 60 unique songs, thanks to Luminate's holiday charts.

Key Findings:

• "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms is America's #1 research Christmas song, reclaiming the #1 position it has held for six of the last seven years. "Christmas music's appeal remains as strong as ever amongst American radio listeners who listen to All Christmas stations 'frequently' or 'sometimes' and personally enjoy Christmas music on a local radio station during the holiday season," said P1 Media Group Partner and co-founder Ken Benson. "As we often see, there is much to learn when we compare radio airplay to on-demand streaming data, even with holiday music. Understanding streaming data can help broaden the appeal of your station."The Holiday Classics rule the Top 20, including two versions of "Jingle Bell Rock," "Holly Jolly Christmas," and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
• 2022's #1 Stream and Airplay song "Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," ranked #26 in total appeal this holiday season, albeit it trails this year's #1 song by less than three percentage points. Mariah's classic ranks #1 with 18-24s.
• Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree" from 2010 and Ariana Grande's "Santa Tell Me" 2014 are the two highest-testing original Christmas songs from the 2000s, ranking #11 and #29, respectively. Both songs scored much higher this year.
• Christmas songs tested considerably higher this year, with 50 of the top 60 Christmas songs testing with an appeal score of 75 or higher on a 100-point scale.
• More say Christmas Music should begin on Thanksgiving last year...23% Early November...20% Beginning of December...27% Thanksgiving (21% in 2022)...19% mid-November 12% mid-December
• The most surprising finding in the study is that 60% (48% in 2022) say Christmas music programming should stop on New Year's Eve.13% on December 26th...17% Christmas Day...7% December 27th...3% some other time

This list includes the 16 Christmas songs from the Top 40 most-streamed that didn't make the Top 40 most-played airplay chart. The research suggests that these 16 songs test well enough to be considered for airplay.

The test list was compiled from the most-played Christmas songs on American radio in 2022 and the most-streamed Christmas songs in America in 2022, according to Luminate. The full results are available HERE.