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In the United Kingdom, Christmas number ones are singles that are top of the UK Singles Chart in the week in which Christmas Day falls. Novelty songs, charity songs or songs with a Christmas theme have regularly been at the top of Christmas charts. Traditionally the volume of record sales in the UK peaks at Christmas, with the Christmas number one being considered especially prestigious, more so than any other time of year. Many of the Christmas number ones were also the best-selling song of the year. Due to the common practice of dating a chart by the date on which the week ends, the Christmas chart is dated the end of the week containing 25 December, but comprises sales for the week before that. The most recent Christmas number one single is "Rockabye" by Clean Bandit featuring Sean Paul and Anne-Marie.
Contents
History
The official UK Singles Chart began in 1952 after appearing in the New Musical Express; the positions of all songs are based on week end sale totals (from Sunday to Saturday until 2015, then from Friday to Thursday). Before 1987 they were released on a Tuesday due to the need for manual calculation. The emergence of a serious contest for the Christmas number-one spot began in 1973 when the band Slade deliberately released "Merry Xmas Everybody" as an effort to reach the top of the charts on Christmas.
Since 2002 the Christmas number one has been dominated by reality television contests, with the winners often heading straight to number one in the week before Christmas. This trend began when Popstars: The Rivals contestants released the top three singles on the Christmas chart. From 2005 to 2008, 2010 and 2013 to 2014, the winners of The X Factor took the number-one spot on seven occasions. In 2007, the X Factor single was so much of a prohibitive favourite for number one that bookmakers started taking bets on which song would be the "Christmas Number Two" instead.
Rage Against the Machine's 1992 single "Killing in the Name" outsold Joe McElderry in 2009 following a successful Facebook campaign. This made them the first group to get a Christmas number one with a download-only single, and resulted in the most download sales in a single week in UK chart history. Similar campaigns in 2010 promoting acts such as Biffy Clyro, John Cage and The Trashmen were unsuccessful. The following year, participants from reality television show The Choir outsold X Factor winners Little Mix and a host of social network campaigns for various novelty acts, and in 2012, a supergroup cover of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", supporting charities associated with the Hillsborough disaster, took the accolade ahead of The X Factor's James Arthur. Following the UK Charts' move to Fridays, the 2015 Christmas number one was revealed on Christmas Day; that year's chart was the first in a decade to not feature the X Factor winner's single in either first or second.
Records
The Beatles are the only act to have four Christmas number ones, three consecutively starting from 1963. On two occasions, 1963 and 1967, they had both the Christmas number one and the number two, the only act to have achieved this. As part of two acts, George Michael repeated the feat with Band Aid and Wham! in 1984. Paul McCartney has been top eight times with various acts. Cliff Richard has spent four Christmasses at number one; two as a solo act, one with The Shadows and one as part of Band Aid II. The Spice Girls later equalled the record of having three consecutive Christmas number ones, from 1996 to 1998. Spice Girl Melanie C achieved a fourth Christmas number one as a member of The Justice Collective in 2012, which also gave Robbie Williams his third.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, which reached the number-one spot at Christmas 1975 and 1991, is the only record to have reached the top twice. "Mary's Boy Child" is the only song to be Christmas number one for two different artists (Harry Belafonte in 1957 and Boney M. in 1978), although "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has been Christmas number one for three generations of Band Aid. The original version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is the second best selling single in UK history.