Mariah Carey's 'Messed-Up' Childhood Is Why She Loves Christmas

In a new interview with W magazine, the unofficial "Queen of Christmas" opened up about how much she loves Santa season and the sobering backstory behind her love of the holiday, which involves her rough upbringing.

"When you grow up with a messed-up life and then you’re able to have this transformation where you can make your life what you want it to be? That is joy for me,” Carey told the publication before adding that her difficult childhood is the main reason why she wants her 11-year-old twins, Moroccan and Monroe Cannon, to "have everything they can have."

She said, "I want them to be able to understand that they can be anything they want to be.”

The "All I Want For Christmas Is You" singer then went on to address public misconceptions about the source of her holiday cheer, noting that most people think of her as “so festive” or the “Christmas girl." However, what they don't understand is that Christmas represents something deeply personal to her because of her childhood trauma: the feeling of being "happy."

“People think I had this princess-style life or whatever, a kind of fairy-tale existence where I just emerged, like, ‘Here I am!,’" she continued. "And that is not what it is."

After all, Carey was quite candid about her experiences in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, in which she talked about the alleged abuse she faced at the hands of her other siblings. According to the pop icon, her house was filled with violence thanks to her "broken" older brother, who she once had to report to the cops for supposedly attempting to "'really hurt my mother.'" Not only that, but Carey also claimed that her older sister, Alison Carey, gave her an entire Valium pill when she was 12, prior to leaving her with a boyfriend, who was allegedly armed.

You can read Carey's entire interview viaW magazine's website here.

Photo via Getty / James Devaney / WireImage