At a time of year when Halloween hasn't even begun to scare us, yet drugstores are already playing holiday music and laying out decorations, we want to applaud Mariah Carey for her restraint.
Restraint? From the Queen of Christmas? The voice behind the modern classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You"?
Well, yes! Because in a series of tweets posted on her account on Oct. 16, Carey has let us know that it's not quite time for her awesome holiday tune, first released in 1994.
"It's almost time..." she shares in the first tweet, an inviting look at a discarded robe and a great big bathtub (and don't miss that great bathmat with her initials on it):
Time for what? A bath? Let's see what comes next: "but..." the next Twitter post, a video, reads, showing Carey in the tub with her back to the camera. There's a pounding on an unseen door and the opening notes of "All I Want" start up ... then wind down again, overridden by the tick of a clock and Carey's wagging finger.
Aha! The picture is getting clearer! The third tweet reads "not yet" and features another video — but this time with Carey facing the camera and playing around with all the suds. A child's voice off-camera (quite likely either Monroe or Moroccan, her 11-year-old twins) says pleadingly, "We want to listen to 'All I Want.'"
"Not yet," she says with a twinkle in her eye and a burst of bubbles at the camera.
"Well, can we at least decorate the tree?" the voice asks.
"Not yet!" she cries, exasperated, and turns back around.
"Why not?!" the child sighs.
Look, we feel this pain: "All I Want" has become a Christmas season staple since its release, hitting No. 1 in 26 countries and finally hitting No. 1 in the U.S. 25 years after its release, in 2019. There's an animated movie based on the song from 2017, and a children's book from 2015. And last December it was the first holiday song on Spotify to hit 1 billion streams. It's just about the happiest holiday tune we can think of, and it's tempting to let it out of the box (even if there is a lawsuit lodged against it).
In 2018, Carey even posted a video of the twins singing the tune with her, and last year the dogs got involved.
But let's take Carey's word for it: It's not time, not yet, to start the unboxing of Christmas goodies. In 2019 it wasn't until Nov. 1 that she kicked off the holiday season with a video of herself getting a call from Santa Claus. Let's at least get through Halloween!