Christmas Carols favored over Billboard hits

*Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You is the highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 holiday hit in 60 years.

*Americans, however, still prefer hearing carols such as Silent Night (12 per cent voted for it) and Jingle Bells (8 per cent), a new poll shows.

*Nine percent of respondents listed the 1946 Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life as their favorite film. Jimmy Stewart plays a conscientious family man who faces a seemingly insurmountable debt and attempts to end his life, but is stopped by a guardian angel on Christmas Eve.

“It’s a story of redemption,” said Michael Germana, 65, who called the film his favorite. The California native is also among the 21 percent of adults 60 and older who choose Silent Night, which was first performed 200 years ago. “It’s a song of inclusion,” Germana said. “There’s no strife.”

*Americans under 30 are more likely than those older to name Jingle Bells (12 percent) and Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You (7 percent) as their favorite.

Carey’s song only trails the 1958 song The Chipmunk Song by David Seville as the highestcharting hit on Billboard. Other popular songs on Billboard charts include Kenny G’s Auld Lang Syne and This One’s for the Children by New Kids on the Block.

*All I Want for Christmas Is You was named by 3 percent of adults overall, while Baby It’s Cold Outside, which has drawn criticism in the (hash) Metoo era and led some stations to stop playing it, was named by 5 percent.

*There were more contemporary choices among respondents when it came to film. Seven percent chose 1983’s A Christmas Story and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but most people didn’t specify whether they preferred the 1966 animated television special or the 2000 live-action adaption starring Jim Carrey. A computer animated version, The Grinch has earned more than $239 million domestically since its early November release.

*Six percent selected the 2003 comedy Elf starring Will Ferrell, the Chevy Chase-led National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Home Alone, a 1990 box office hit starring Macaulay Culkin as the burglarth warting Kevin Mccallister. Also listed as a favorite by 2 percent of respondents: the 1988 Bruce Willis action film Die Hard.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,067 adults was conducted Dec. 13-16 using a sample drawn from NORC’S probability-based Amerispeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population.

Despicable Me actor Steve Carell said he once received a pair of Santa socks. “Those ones, like the aunt who has met you three times sends you and doesn’t really know your likes or dislikes, just gets something at the gas station on the way over, that kind of gift,” he said. “But you know what? You have to appreciate it anyway because it’s done out of love.”