Christmas as early as September?
The Philippines’ long Christmas season earned buzz anew after “Songbird Supreme” Mariah Carey responded to an update about her iconic holiday hit reaching the charts again.
The Grammy-winning American singer on Sunday replied to a post by a fan account claiming that her 1994 single “All I Want for Christmas Is You” received 316,000 streams on a music streaming app on September 2.
The fan account additionally claimed that the figure was a “75% increase compared to the same day in 2022.”
Mariah saw the post and responded with, “Not yet!!!!”
It was accompanied by speaking head emojis.
“I’ll allow it for my Filipino lambs, though!” she added with emojis of a sheep and a red heart. “Lambs” is what the singer calls her fans.
“(I don’t make the rules!),” Mariah further said with a shrugging emoji.
Her post has reached a staggering amount of over 156,000 likes, 23,200 reposts, and 7,047 quotes so far.
It also garnered several reactions from users on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, including those who just now found out about the Philippines’ months-long Christmas holiday celebration because of her response.
“Did Christmas start in September in [the Philippines] though,” an online user commented.
“Is September the start of Christmas in the Philippines? Wow, we learn everyday,” another user wrote.
“I’m in the Philippines and can confirm. While shopping, I heard this song 3x [three times] yesterday!! Lol, Filipinos don’t play, X-mas [Christmas] starts Sept 1st over here,” wrote another user.
Some Filipinos also confirmed the notion by sharing videos and pictures of Yuletide displays in shopping malls.
Another online user shared a clip where Mariah’s hit was being blasted at a public place.
In the Philippines, the “Ber” months (or the months ending in “-ber”) are almost always synonymous with the Christmas season.
While Halloween is also celebrated in the Philippines, it is not that big of a festivity in the Southeast Asian country, unlike in Western countries.
As early as September, the first of the “Ber” months, commercial establishments would put up Holiday-inspired displays and blast Yuletide songs in anticipation of Christmas.
The most popular tracks during this season would be Jose Mari Chan’s “Christmas in Our Hearts” and Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.”
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In a 2021 interview, a neurologist and culture enthusiast shared that the early Christmas celebration was “commerce-driven.”
“With the proliferation of shopping malls, first in Metro Manila, which later on mushroomed far into the provinces, Christmas carols started to be heard soon after All Saints Day [on] November 1,” Joven Cuanang said to CNBC before.
“This was to attract people to start shopping for Christmas gifts — it was commerce-driven,” he added.
For sociologist Bro. Clifford Sorita, however, it is related to Filipinos’ “psychological framework to count down the days to big celebrations.”
“100 days until Christmas start on September 16th but we, Filipinos, we always like to start celebrating earlier,” he said to Rappler in 2017.
“By knowing exactly how much time we have remaining to complete a task, instead of stressing about it, we will be able to better allocate our time. In fact, a 100-day countdown also acts as a secondary motivator and reinforces us Filipinos to complete our Christmas tasks before the big day,” Sorita added.
The “Ber” months are also associated with the onset of the northeast monsoon or the “amihan,” in which cool and dry winds from Siberia and China would make their way to Southeast Asia.
This makes the air cooler than usual.
It can also be considered the country’s equivalent to the winter season, which also happens in December—the Christmas month—in countries in the Northern Hemisphere.