Mariah Carey has officially defrosted. The Queen of Christmas declared “It’s Time!” at midnight on 1 November 2026, opening the holiday season with her annual video — and this year she did it with a punk rock twist that caught fans completely by surprise.
The video, posted shortly before midnight Eastern time on Saturday 31 October, passed 18 million views in its first 12 hours, with more than 85,000 comments, according to Cliche magazine. It is the latest instalment of a tradition Carey began in 2019, turning years of jokes about her “defrosting” every 1 November into a social media event.
A dive bar, a countdown, a stage dive
The 2026 clip opens with the words “New York City… October 31st” and a countdown clock showing 11.58 p.m. The camera pans through a dive bar filled with patrons in Halloween costumes and punk rock attire, before turning to the stage, where Carey appears in a plaid skirt, fishnet stockings, a leather jacket and glittery purple lipstick.
She performs “Hermit”, a song from Chick, the mid-1990s alternative rock project she created with her friend Clarissa Dane, then stage-dives into the crowd as the screen cuts to black. When the countdown hits midnight, she reappears in a glittery Santa-inspired red outfit, belts out “It’s Time!”, and launches into “All I Want for Christmas Is You” perched atop a massive Christmas tree as its star.
A joke she embraced
The “defrosting” joke began on Twitter in 2017, when fans joked that Carey spends the warmer months frozen in a giant block of ice, waiting to be thawed when November arrives. It went viral the following year, and Carey embraced it, releasing a video in 2023 of trick-or-treaters using blow dryers to defrost her from a block of ice.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released in 1994 as the lead single from her first holiday album, Merry Christmas, co-written and produced by Carey and Walter Afanasieff. More than three decades later, the song returns to the charts every Christmas, and Carey’s 1 November announcement has become the internet’s unofficial signal that Christmas music season has begun.
Carey will continue her Christmas performances in Birmingham, London and Manchester in the UK starting from the end of November.
Sources: Entertainment Now, 1 Nov 2026; Cliche magazine, 1 Nov 2026; InMusic Blog, 1 Nov 2026; StarNews Korea, 2 Nov 2026.
