Getting Into the Holiday Spirit, One Stream at a Time

It has happened to all of us: you walk into a store, thinking what a beautiful summer it’s been and suddenly there it is: "Last Christmas". You’ve just been whammed. While radio stations and department stores tend to dust off the Christmas classics as early as November, private listeners get into the holiday spirit a little later.

The following chart, based on Spotify data from 2017, shows the gradual rise in popularity of Christmas songs on the streaming platform through November and December. While holiday tunes accounted for just 1 percent of all streams in early November, that share climbed to 5 percent by Thanksgiving weekend and continued to grow through December before peaking at 22 percent on Christmas day.