Legally, Mariah Carey can't call herself Queen of Christmas

Mariah Carey’s bid to be crowned the One True Queen of Christmas has been denied. In the realm of pop culture, the singer certainly has a claim on the title, owing to her tremendously successful and timeless holiday classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” As such, she was hoping to extend her reign into the realm of trademarks so that she could brand skin care products, dog leashes, coconut milk, and more. (No, really.) But another Christmas Queen stood in her way.

“The kind of music and the Christmas culture that allowed [Carey] and me to be a ‘Queen of Christmas’ is what I wanted to offer to generations after we’re long gone,” Elizabeth Chan, the noted Christmas caroler who filed a series of oppositions to Carey’s trademark bid, told The Washington Post. “Whether it’s grandmothers baking cookies or Etsy sellers or Christmas movies, it takes a lot of people to help usher in the season, and for one person to outrightly own that is wrong.”

Ah, a Christmas Queen for the people! Rather than battling it out Game Of Thrones style, Chan wants to bestow a piece of the crown to everyone, à la Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls (who, by the way, is also a Christmas Queen). “This isn’t about who’s the queen of Christmas,” she explained to the outlet. “This is about [Carey’s] attempt to basically monopolize ‘Queen of Christmas’ in a very big overreaching way. Like, how many ‘Queens of Christmas’ could we have missed? And how many other new Christmas songs would we have missed?”

Chan’s lawyer Louis W. Tompros called the bid “a case of trademark bullying,” adding that “Tomorrow you can go out and proudly wear your ‘Queen of Christmas’ sweatshirt, and the ‘Queen of Christmas’ on radio stations can be a new person every year. Man or woman, whatever they want, anyone is the ‘Queen of Christmas.’” Huzzah!

One person who is definitely pleased with Chan’s efforts is Darlene Love, who previously registered her complaints after pointing out that David Letterman appointed her the title a year before “All I Want For Christmas” was even released. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” songstress wrote, “Congrats to all the other Queen of Christmases around the world, living and whom have passed!” Long live the Queen(s).