{"id":321788,"date":"2022-11-17T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/?p=321788"},"modified":"2022-11-17T12:32:08","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T12:32:08","slug":"how-the-uk-christmas-no-1-became-a-national-obsession-and-a-vicious-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/how-the-uk-christmas-no-1-became-a-national-obsession-and-a-vicious-competition","title":{"rendered":"How the UK Christmas No 1 became a national obsession &#8211; and a vicious competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LadBaby, Mariah Carey and Mr Blobby. Composite: FRPAP.com\/AP\/Shutterstock When sleigh bells begin jingling in the distance, thoughts turn to gifts, turkeys and, most importantly, what will be No 1 come Christmas day. At least, they do in the UK &#8211; where the quest to net a festive chart topper is a national obsession that inspires fierce loyalties, grassroots campaigns and, of course, dozens of novelty singles. A glance at the list of UK Christmas No 1s reveals no historical rhyme or reason: Clean Bandit are as likely to make it as The Beatles, a festive track has as much chance as the Pet Shop Boys&#8217; pristine cover of Always on My Mind. A school choir can release an ode to Grandmas and, of course, there are bizarre outliers such as LadBaby, Bob the Builder and the never-to-be-underestimated Mr Blobby. For the first decades of the charts, the Christmas No 1 wasn&#8217;t a major concern. Usually, it would be a Christmas-specific<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charity singalongs, novelty hits and Facebook campaign curveballs &#8211; the festive top spot holds a symbolic power for the British. Is that why Mariah still can&#8217;t win it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrities","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}