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This page shows the best-selling Christmas albums in the United States. It includes artists from all over the world, but it only includes sales in the United States of America.
Prior to March 1, 1991, the only means of tracking sales figures for record albums and singles in the United States was via the certification system of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), based specifically on shipments (less potential returns) on a long-term basis. According to the most recent record album certifications, the holiday album title that has shipped the most copies in the United States is Elvis Presley's 1957 LP Elvis' Christmas Album, which is certified by the RIAA for shipment of 17 million copies in the U.S. (3 million copies of the original 1957 release on RCA Victor Records, plus 10 million copies of a "budget" edition first released by RCA Camden in 1970 and then by Pickwick Records in 1975, and 4 million copies of another RCA reissue titled It's Christmas Time released in 1985).[1]
From March 1, 1991, through the present day, the Nielsen SoundScan tracking system has been more widely used to accurately track sales of record albums and singles at the point of sale (POS) based on inventory bar code scans.
In November 2016, Billboard has compiled a list of the top ten selling Christmas albums, using both RIAA certification information and actual point-of-sale data from Nielsen SoundScan. For albums released before SoundScan started collecting data in 1991, Billboard used their RIAA certification to determine sales.[2] As of December 8th, 2023, Mariah Carey's "Merry Christmas" certified 9,000,000 album sales in the United States.[3]
This is a list of the 25 best-selling Christmas albums of the Nielsen SoundScan era in the United States for cumulative sales as tracked by Nielsen SoundScan through December 1, 2014.[4] Nielsen Music began tracking sales data for Billboard on March 1, 1991. As of December 8th, 2023, Mariah Carey's "Merry Christmas" certified 9,000,000 album sales in the United States[3]
This is an incomplete list of the best-selling Christmas albums in the United States based on shipment certification by the RIAA. This list provides a more complete representation of the best-selling Christmas albums in history, as it includes those released well before the Nielsen/SoundScan era of music sales.
In 1963, Billboard magazine began publishing a special weekly sales charts for Christmas album sales named "Christmas Albums" for three to four weeks during each holiday season. Titles that appeared on these charts were excluded from the regular Billboard 200 album sales charts. These special, year-end "Christmas Albums" charts were published from 1963 to 1973. The chart was discontinued from 1974 to 1982, when holiday titles were once again included in the regular Billboard 200 chart. "Christmas Albums" started up again in 1983 and appeared each year until 1985 (during these three years, holiday titles were eligible for inclusion on the weekly Billboard 200 chart). It was discontinued in 1986, but resumed in 1987 under the name "Christmas Albums". In 2000, the chart was renamed to "Top Holiday Albums" and has been published by Billboard each year since. Billboard's special Christmas albums sales charts have varied in size over the years, from a low of 5 chart positions to a high of 117 chart positions.[7]
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