Santa is a Wizard Who Controls Love: The Confounding New Christmas Mythology of Ariana Grande
As of this writing, Ariana Grande is the most streamed female artist in history, topping plays on both Spotify and Apple Music. Since her debut, she has released six studio albums (3 Platinum, 3 Double Platinum), one compilation album (exclusive to Japan), one remix album (also exclusive to Japan for some reason), one live album, two extended plays, 52 singles (including 16 as a featured artist), and 17 promotional singles.
Grande’s gilded career is characterized by a commitment to lyrical simplicity. It’s a style that allows her to illuminate the fundamental truths of our human condition.
In “34+35” (Positions, 2020):
If I put it quite plainly / Just gimme them babies
In “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” (thank u, next, 2019):
Took one fuckin' look at your face / Now I wanna know how you taste (mmm)
And in “Love Me Harder” (My Everything, 2014):
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh / Love me, love me, love me
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh / Harder, harder, harder
Through her directness and candour, we have become familiar with the core tenets of Grande’s philosophy:
Love is a source of meaning, but also a driver of conflict
Loss is a source of pain, but also a driver of growth
Sex is a source of pleasure, but also a driver of empowerment
Anyone on the street could rattle these off to you. Grande’s distilled ideology of Love / Loss / Sex and the inherent dualism of each is simply a foundational underpinning of current pop culture discourse.
Which is why I’m shocked that, despite equally frank expression in her lyrics, another ideology of Grande’s has flown entirely under the radar. One that cements her as our generation’s foremost Santa Claus revisionist and turns the dominant Christmas mythology on its head.
Love, actually
Of Grande’s extensive discography, 16 songs are Christmas themed. Of these, two are covers of holiday classics which, while imbued with Grande’s trademark poppy salaciousness, offer little insight into her personal views on holiday magic. For this, we rely on her originals. And we needn’t look far. She puts it right in front of us.
“Santa Tell Me” (non-album single, 2014) is Grande’s most popular Christmas track. It is also the point of her ideological spear, in which Grande employs the chorus, repeated 5 times in the song’s 3 minute 24 second runtime, to change the narrative on Claus’s Christmas abilities. Six lines that shake the foundations of our belief:
Santa, tell me if you're really there
Don't make me fall in love again
If he won't be here next year
Santa, tell me if he really cares
'Cause I can't give it all away
If he won't be here next year
The character motivations in this chorus are classic Grande. She has a romantic interest, sees the potential for love, and wishes to avoid the risk of loss and pain should that love be superficial or short lived. Tale as old as time.
It’s the proposed solution to this dilemma that introduces our twist. Let’s break it down. First:
Santa, tell me if you’re really there
Grande makes it clear that she is directly addressing Santa. This isn’t unusual, and follows the tradition of established classics like “Santa Baby” (Kitt, 1953) and “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” (Miller, 1865). Then, without hesitation, Grande fires her ideological bullet:
Don’t make me fall in love again
In eight syllables, Grande introduces and asserts the biggest revision to the Santa Claus mythology since Coca-Cola’s jolly red makeover of 1931. Namely, that Santa has the power to magically make people fall in love. That his powers aren’t limited to slipping down chimneys and picking out great presents, but directly altering consciousness and free will. That Santa is also Cupid, but with dominion over an Elven bureaucracy and an outfit that doesn’t imply incontinence.
When we examine these two lines together, they take on new meaning:
Santa, tell me if you're really there
Don't make me fall in love again
Grande brazenly implies that Santa’s possession of love-controlling powers is more certain than his existence, upsetting the hierarchy of Christmas mythology and crowning her new ideology as fundamental truth.
She goes on:
Santa, tell me if he really cares
Here, Grande extends her new mythology, but with something more subtle: Santa can discern the trueness of love and communicate this to influence the outcome of love affairs. This is clever. Santa’s power of discernment between naughty and nice is well-established. Grande pushes this one step further, using naughty-nice canon as scaffolding for Santa’s new love magic. It’s a page from the playbook of Christmas itself, embracing pagan winter solstice traditions to ease the adoption of Christian narratives. But there is no swaddled baby Christ in Grande’s ideological manger. Rather, it contains Santa the Love Wizard.
Wizard, you say?
I use “wizard” not to be dramatic. You see, “Santa Tell Me” is not a standalone manifesto. Grande’s lore goes further, reinforced and fleshed out in her other originals.
“Santa Can’t You Hear Me” (When Christmas Comes Around, 2021) is a collaboration with Kelly Clarkson that has Clarkson and Grande clarifying their Christmas desires to Santa and pleading with him for engagement on the subject:
I don't need a thing
I sent a letter to you, ooh, ooh
On how to make my dreams come true, yeah, yeah
What I want for Christmas
Hasn't come and I've been so blue
Tell me what can I do? Ooh, ooh, oh yeah
Keep the mistletoe (keep the mistletoe)
Unless below, is what I need (what I need)
Santa, can't you hear me?
While they are never explicit, the message is clear. The desired thing is not material. Rather, it is something that might be found under the mistletoe (typically a love interest) which Santa is magically capable of delivering.
“Snow in California” (Christmas Kisses, 2013) has Grande making a direct appeal to Santa in the name of love once again, but calling for a different means of intervention:
Dear Santa
It's me, Ariana
I know it's been a while but I really need
Your help this year
Let me make this clearSee, I-I really love him
And it's been kinda tough 'cause
He's only in town for the holidays
Tomorrow he's flyin' away
Away from meI don't need another gift
I just have one wish
This year can youJust make it snow in California?
I'll even settle for rain
Don't want him to go tomorrow mornin'
Give me somethin' to make him stay
Yes, Ariana Grande’s Santa can, in the service of love, magically manipulate our weather (in this case, to cause flight interruptions and prolong time spent with Grande’s love interest). Not only is this power absent from established Santa canon, it is in direct conflict with our common understanding that Jack Frost, as the Spirit of Winter, is responsible for snow, ice, and cold weather as popularly depicted in “The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause” (Walt Disney Pictures, 2006).
So, Grande’s Santa has the power to:
Make an individual fall in love
Discern whether love is true
Manipulate weather in the service of love
This goes well beyond the supernatural gift-giving associated with Saint Nicholas, so Grande’s Santa derives his powers from something beyond sainthood. Santa can be killed, as established in Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause” (Walt Disney Pictures, 1994), so he is not a god. With these options eliminated, the broad scope and thematic focus of abilities point to Grande’s Santa as a wizard. A Wizard of Love.
All I want for Christmas is new
At this stage, you may be thinking that the association of romantic love with Christmas runs deep. Is Grande’s ideology really different than all the other Christmas songs about love? Is it fair to paint Grande as such an icono-Claus-t?
To both, the answer is yes.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate what a canonical deviation Grande puts forward is by comparison with the artist who defined our modern understanding of love and Christmas, whose “All I Want for Christmas is You”(Merry Christmas, 1994) stands as the Billboard #1 Holiday Track of All Time, Mariah Carey.
Like Grande, Carey’s work plays with the themes of gifts and romance - both are things we can desire around the holidays. But the similarity is short lived, with departure in the opening lyrics of Carey’s most popular track:
I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you
Carey is speaking directly to her love interest and making a romantic petition for their reciprocated affection. This is normal. In fact, person-to-person expressions of affection are fundamental to romance, Christmas or otherwise. It is love at Christmas, but Santa is not involved.
She goes on to be explicit about not calling on Santa for assistance or awaiting his intervention:
I won't make a list and send it to the North Pole for Saint Nick
I won't even stay awake to hear those magic reindeer click
In the song’s bridge, Carey expresses what, at first, might seem to be a contradiction, and a deviation into the Love Wizard school of thought:
Oh-oh, all the lights are shining so brightly everywhere (so brightly, baby)
And the sound of children's laughter fills the air (oh, oh, yeah)
And everyone is singing (oh, yeah)
I hear those sleigh bells ringing
Santa, won't you bring me the one I really need? (Yeah, oh)
Won't you please bring my baby to me?
However, when full musical context is considered, we understand that these lyrics actually reaffirm Carey’s consistency and distance her from Love Wizard ideology.
Carey deliberately uses these lyrics as her bridge, a structurally distinct component of the song, to imply a distinction in how we should interpret meaning.
This bridge takes place after many verses and a repeated refrain of (as of yet) unreciprocated romantic pleading. Desperation is starting to take hold. Carey sets the scene – lights shining, children’s laughter, everyone singing, sleigh bells ringing – an environment of mounting sensory overload. Then, there is a psychological crack – and it is audible in Carey’s vocals upon listening – with Carey pleading for a miracle from a character who had previously been dismissed during a period of logical planning.
The bridge is also the first time Carey stops addressing her romantic interest directly, implying that either (i) they are no longer in her presence or (ii) they are still in her presence and she has lost her grip on reality. In any case, Carey only invokes Santa as a practitioner of love magic when she is:
Desperate
Overwhelmed by her environment
Either emotionally isolated or mentally dissociative
Carey’s brilliance here is undeniable, and no doubt a major driver of this pop hit’s staying power. She portrays Santa’s Love Wizardry not as a valid ideology, but as the product of delusion. Decades before Grande’s revisionism, Carey saw the risk and spelled out a warning. The difference is clear.
Carey’s messages:
My love interest has agency
Santa does not play a role in whether my romantic desires are realized
To believe as much is delusional
Grande’s messages:
My love interest’s agency can be denied by Santa’s magical intervention
Santa is the arbiter of romantic love
This is true to the point of being axiomatic
Still not convinced? Let’s make it real for you. This isn’t just an academic juxtaposition – it’s a battle that’s been fought right in before our eyes.
Carey on, my wayward song
“Oh Santa!” (Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special, 2020) is a three-way musical collaboration between Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande, and Jennifer Hudson. It is undeniably a bop. Its messaging is firmly in line with the new mythology of Santa the Love Wizard. The opening is a chant, almost an incantation:
Oh, Santa's gon' come and make you mine this Christmas
Santa's gon' come and make you mine, mine (oh, Santa)
Santa's gon' come and make you mine this Christmas (oh, Santa)
Santa's gon' come and make you mine, mine
It would seem, at first, that the ideology pioneered by Grande has become dominant and that Carey, the stalwart defender of a Christmas mythology that decries (rather than glorifies) the centralization of magical power under Claus, has been turned. But closer examination reveals something different. The truth lies not in the whole, but the parts. Who is singing what? Look at this verse, which plays 1 minute 29 seconds in:
They say it's unrealistic [Carey]
But I believe in you, Saint Nick [Hudson]
So grant this wish for me right quick [Grande]
Santa won't you come and make him mine this Christmas night? [Grande]
We find what we have always found. Carey fighting her fight, consistent in her messaging that belief in the Love Wizard is delusion. Grande still fighting hers, proselytizing her Love Wizard ideology as the new mythology of Christmas.
It begs the question. Why?
It’s the hope that kills you
Christmas is a holiday deeply associated with family coming together. That is more complex and often emotionally challenging for families where parents have legally separated, especially for children in those families. So, it was a good thing when, in the early 1990’s, mainstream Christmas films started exploring the topic of divorce. There were two approaches.
“All I Want for Christmas” (Paramount Pictures, 1991) epitomizes the first approach. Its central conflict has two children scheming to get their parents back together. After many failed hijinks, they ultimately succeed with the help of Santa Claus’s supernatural intervention. The film was critically panned, financially underwhelming, and is, in modern Christmas lore, culturally irrelevant.
“The Santa Clause” (Walt Disney Pictures, 1994) epitomizes the other approach. The central conflict creates strain on a family with separated parents. Christmas magic and hijinks play out, but no parents get back together. Rather, the growth in their relationship comes from lessons learned due to the central conflict that improve communication in the still-separated status quo. Twenty-seven years later, “The Santa Clause” remains one of the most iconic and treasured pieces of modern Christmas pop culture.
The biggest difference between these two films is what they teach. “All I Want for Christmas” has a perilous moral. It ignores the fact that divorce often happens for a reason and fosters false hope that separations will be magically reversed. It panders irresponsibly to children who have faced emotional hardship and sets them up for further disappointment. It teaches that Santa is a wizard who controls love.
“The Santa Clause” normalizes in popular culture what is already normal in life, bringing children with divorced parents in on the holiday canon, all while providing a realistic model for hope. Hope that, with time and kindness, separation can hurt less than it used to. Santa does not control love. People have agency. “The Santa Clause” touched on a truth, and has be enshrined in Christmas mythology accordingly.
Like all of us, Carey is a product of her time. We don’t know what factored into her thought process, but we do know that this dialogue around Christmas, divorce, love, and hope was playing out just as she was working on the album that would cement her as a dominant voice in holiday cheer. It’s not surprising that her Christmas ideology is firmly grounded in the separation of love and Santa.
This helps explains our starting point. Why, despite love and Christmas being tightly linked, Santa the Love Wizard hasn’t come to prominence earlier. What it doesn’t explain is Grande’s motive for championing this new ideology.
Love is Everything
Defining Grande’s rationale in opposition to Carey’s is unfounded. Grande herself is a child of divorced parents, her mother and father separating when she was around eight years old. And yet, somehow, Ariana Grande landed on the idea that Santa controls love.
“Love is Everything” (Christmas Kisses, 2013) is the closest thing we have to a missing link. Another of Grande’s holiday originals, it illuminates (with soaring and triumphant vocals) a moment where Grande’s philosophy is in transition:
The truth is your heart is the biggest gift you can give anyone
I know we can do it
Cause when I look around there's enough for everyone
If you spend a little time, look deep inside
Search your heart and I'm sure you'll find
That the best gift you can give this Christmas
The ideas underpinning this verse are popularly held:
The heart represents love
The heart is something that can be given (meaning that love can be expressed to or felt for the recipient)
If something can be given, it can be a gift
As such, love can be a gift
But these ideas exist on the unexplored boundary of metaphor. If one were to slip over the edge…
Love can be a gift
Santa has supernatural gift giving abilities
As such, Santa has supernatural abilities related to love
And all evidence points to Grande slipping. The refrain of “Love is Everything” is as follows:
All we need is love
Love is all we need
Love underneath the tree
Love is everything, love is everything
That’s right:
Love underneath the tree
In the most literal sense possible, Grande equates love to a Christmas gift, the canonical domain of Santa’s magical powers. And to dismiss this as metaphor is simple denial, as Grande goes on to repeat the phrase that will become the name of the song:
Love is everything, love is everything
Her insistence upon this equivalence reveals an incapacity to distinguish between the immaterial concept of love and all material goods – good where Santa’s powers hold canonical sway. It would seem that Grande came by her new mythology sincerely – an artist exploring metaphor and getting lost beyond the edges of the map.
And yet…
I’m not satisfied with this explanation. It relies on Grande getting mired in the depths of metaphor. It casts her as someone who lives by her mistakes, rather than learns from them. It suggests that, while she has no ill intent, she continues to promote an ideology that sets up emotionally vulnerable children for holiday disappointment.
In short, it goes against everything we know about Grande.
Grande, who’s aversion to metaphor is what gives her lyrics their simplicity and resonance. Remember:
If I put it quite plainly / Just gimme them babies
Grande, for whom loss is a source of pain, but also a driver of growth. Just hum the tune of “thank u, next” (thank u, next, 2019) and let Grande spell out what we know to be true, that she moves on from her mistakes, rather than doubling down:
One taught me love
One taught me patience
And one taught me pain
Now, I’m so amazing
Grande, who’s art puts emotions at the forefront of consciousness. Who’s lived experience with parental separation would attenuate her to the unique emotional challenges it poses. Who is the last person likely to shrug off divorced children as ideological collateral.
And so, I’ve pondered. And speculated. And struggled.
And in doing so, I keep finding myself coming back to Grande’s core philosophical tenets, and their seemingly contradictory dualism. Remember:
Love is a source of meaning, but also a driver of conflict
Loss is a source of pain, but also a driver of growth
Sex is a source of pleasure, but also a driver of empowerment
And it is in this contradiction that I find an answer, and propose a fourth tenet. A holiday tenet:
4. Santa the Love Wizard is a flawed new Christmas mythology, but it is the one we need right now
We’ve explored what is flawed about the new mythology of Santa the Love Wizard:
It denies individual agency and control
It fails to recognize that sometimes things that hurt us, like lost love, happen for a good reason
It breeds false hope, which leads to disappointment
But… what if you lived in a time when individual agency and control were in retreat. When there was a seemingly endless need to make personal sacrifices for the good of the community. When the known existential threats to humanity required intervention beyond the influence of any one person and global coordination beyond the capability of entrenched political structures.
What if the generation that grew up listening to Grande was finding that, increasingly, the things hurting them were happening for no good reason at all. That nobody benefits when age strips parents of their faculties, when the cost of living shoots up while wages stagnate, when a close friend’s diagnosis is terminal.
And what if all this meant that false hope is better than hopelessness. Maybe Grande’s mythological expansion is a loan to us, a temporary reprieve we will pay for later, but that we need dearly right now.
And in this, Grande is in line with the most fundamental underpinning of the modern Christmas mythology. The tradition of Santa Clause himself.
Parents around the world tell children the story of Santa Clause. They knowingly propagate a falsehood – stuffing stockings at midnight, sipping milk and nibbling cookies, forging Santa’s signature on department store purchases – to give their children a sense of magic and wonder that cannot otherwise be given. They say to themselves, “When they are older, we will tell them. Let them enjoy it while they can. They’re only children.”
Grande says, “Aren’t we all children?”
She offers up love magic in a time when reality could use a little more love. When we’re older, we’ll face the disappointment, but maybe then we’ll be ready. For now, let us enjoy it while we can.
Then again, maybe she does none of this. Says none of this. Maybe it’s all a mistake. Or a coincidence. Just delusions of… shall we say… Grande-ur?
Sometimes, especially around the holidays, you can’t know for sure. You just have to believe.
Merry Christmas. May Santa bring you the love you desire.
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Note: This essay was researched and written in a continuous, single-day session that can best be characterized as a fever dream. The thoughts, views, and opinions expressed are definitely those of the author, but it’s best not to take them too seriously. Besides, you just read a 3,700-word essay about Ariana Grande championing the new mythology of Santa the Love Wizard. We could all stand to take ourselves a little less seriously.
Also, if Ariana Grande is reading this, thank you for the music that inspired this piece and the gift of poppy salaciousness that you give to the world each Christmas and all year round.
