was the first person to reach Christmas number one, in 1952. The
UK Singles Chart began in 1952 – appearing in the
New Musical Express. The positions of all songs are based on weekly sales (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
glam rock bands
Slade and
Wizzard deliberately released festive songs in an effort to reach the top of the charts at Christmas, with Slade's "
Merry Xmas Everybody" beating Wizzard's "
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday". The Christmas number-one single was not revealed on Christmas Day itself until 1994. From 2002 until 2014, the competition for the Christmas number one was 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. Between 2005 and 2014, the winners of
The X Factor took the number-one spot on seven occasions. In 2007, the
X Factor single was such a strong favourite for number one that
bookmakers began 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 against this trend. 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. In 2011, the
Military Wives and Gareth Malone, both involved with the reality television show
The Choir, outsold
X Factor winners
Little Mix and a host of social network campaigns for various novelty acts. In 2012, a
supergroup cover of "
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", supporting charities associated with the
Hillsborough disaster, reached the number one ahead of
The X Factors
James Arthur. Following the UK Charts' move to Fridays, the Christmas number one is revealed on Christmas Day whenever it falls on a Friday, such as in 2015 and 2020; the former year's chart was the first in a decade to not feature the
X Factor winner's single in the top two.
Amazon Music has released a number of exclusive festive tracks since 2018, recorded with acts such as
Justin Bieber,
Jess Glynne, and
Ellie Goulding, none of which have topped the Christmas chart, though Goulding's track later reached number one. More recently, non-traditional acts have been successful with
novelty songs released for charity; most notably,
YouTubers LadBaby achieved number one every year between 2018 and 2022, each time raising money for
the Trussell Trust, before voluntarily ending their streak by not releasing a Christmas single in 2023. "
Last Christmas", a single by
Wham! originally released in 1984, became the first single to become Christmas number one in two consecutive years. This was largely due to changes in the compilation process that granted heavier favour toward streaming, which allowed perennial seasonal records to re-enter the charts and effectively ensured that older records would be the favourites for the Christmas number one chart. ==Records==