‘NO ONE IS QUEEN FOREVER’

Christmas Queen Explains Why She Challenged Mariah Carey’s Trademark Bid

“What I was trying to do is protect Christmas,” Elizabeth Chan said. “You know, it’s not about a competition.”

Elizabeth Chan, the woman who stopped counting the number of Christmas songs she’d written somewhere around the 1,200 mark, believes Christmas is for everyone and that no one—not even Mariah Carey—should be able to own it. So when Carey filed an application to trademark the phrase “Queen of Christmas” for her company to use on an avalanche of products, including dairy-free milk, dog collars, and sunglasses, Chan put up a fight, filing her opposition to the move. And last month, she triumphed by default. “A lot of people think it was a me vs. Mariah thing, but it wasn’t. It’s not about that at all. It was a Mariah vs. everybody thing,” Chan told Slate in an interview published Tuesday. “Because what she was actually taking away was even your right to call me the Queen of Christmas, or your right to call anybody else the Queen of Christmas.” Dropping some harsh truths—“No one is queen forever, not even Queen Elizabeth”—Chan explained that she was frustrated by the narrative that she’d been competing with the All I Want For Christmas Is You singer. “What I was trying to do is protect Christmas,” she said. “You know, it’s not about a competition.”