Mariah Carey may not be getting what she wants for Christmas — but Elizabeth Chan sure is.
Last year Carey, who reportedly makes around $1.55 million annually from her now-legendary 1994 song “All I Want for Christmas,” petitioned to trademark the name “Queen of Christmas.” But she didn’t count on singer-songwriter Chan stepping forward and stopping her from claiming the title.
The Manhattan-based married mother of two quit her marketing job at Condé Nast in 2012 to get into the holiday game and has written more than 1,200 Christmas songs. Chan, who had been called “Queen of Christmas” by DJs and even used the title for an album in 2021, felt she had to take legal steps to stop Carey from crowning herself.
“When you are the most prolific artist writing Christmas music, you get called Queen of Christmas. It is an honorary title,” Chan — whose current hit, “Merry Merry,” hit Billboard’s top 5 in the Holiday 100 chart — told The Post.
“When someone wanted to trademark it, take it out of the public domain and turn it into private property, my feeling was that I can’t let it happen.”
Chan found out about Carey’s intentions last year while recording a spoken-word album called “Queen of Christmas.”
Adding insult to injury, Carey also wanted to trademark “Princess Christmas.” That cut close to the bone for Chan: Her five-year-old daughter Noelle (she also has a daughter thematically named Eva, 2) is known as the Princess of Christmas — complete with a website and book. (Not to be confused with Carey’s book “The Christmas Princess.”)
“I looked at my daughter,” Chan said in a podcast on her lawyers’ website. “I wanted to protect what Christmas looked like for [her] in the future.”
Short-circuiting Carey’s trademarking of the title meant potentially derailing a host of products that the pop star had expressed intentions to release as the Queen of Christmas: posters, pajamas, cocktail shakers and face masks, among others.
Working against the clock — once a trademark request is published in the Official Gazette of the US Patent and Trademark Office, there is a small window of time during which to oppose it — Chan enlisted WilmerHale to represent her. Willing to risk what her lawyer Louis W. Tompros has characterized as “a huge amount of potential backlash from fans of a globally known superstar,” she went after Carey’s attempt to claim the title.
But Chan is a benevolent queen: She didn’t want to have the title all to herself, but to simply keep the title in the public domain and allow other people to use it.
One of those people is Darlene Love, famous for singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” As Love posted to Facebook after Carey tried to control the title, “I’ve been in the business for 52 years, have earned it and can still hit those notes! If Mariah has a problem, call … my lawyer.”
“There are many Queens of Christmas,” Chan told The Post. “When I think of the Queen of Christmas, I think of my grandmother.”
Upon finding that she had blocked Carey’s claim, “I was relieved and felt that justice had been served,” Can said. “I got more support than backlash and was happy to give Christmas back to everybody.”
Still, Chan is not feeling so generous that she’ll gift her loved ones with Carey’s new holiday line of bath and skincare products: “No. I didn’t even know they existed.”