Mariah Carey says her new Christmas book is for 'all the people who have ever felt othered'

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this story misstated the status of Mariah Carey's masters. 

No one takes Christmas more seriously than Mariah Carey.

The "All I Want For Christmas Is You" hitmaker has turned the holiday into a cottage industry, with concerts, TV specials, even McDonald's menus centered around her love for all things merry. That festive fervor spills over at home, too.

"When I'm not on stage and I'm in holiday mode, there are rules that I set," Carey says. "I don't care who it is – the kids, if I have guests, whatever – nobody is allowed to play or watch anything other than a Christmas-related thing. If I wake up in the middle of the night and walk into the living room, and the music isn't playing and the lights aren't on, I just can't handle it."

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The singer posted a playful video to her social media Tuesday ringing in the holiday season, shedding her witchy Halloween costume for a Santa-inspired jumpsuit. "It's time," reads a title card at the end of the clip, which is set to the tune of her chart-topping "All I Want For Christmas Is You." 

Her yuletide takeover continues with heartwarming new children's book "The Christmas Princess" (Henry Holt and Co., 48 pp., out now). Co-written with Michaela Angela Davis, the story follows a young girl named Little Mariah who lives in a rundown shack with her overworked mom, Mother La Diva. She gets bullied by neighborhood kids and longs for Christmas cheer to help brighten her gloomy life. But through singing, she soon discovers her power to spread joy and unite people.

Carey describes the character as a sort of "mixed-race Pippi Longstocking," who works through sadness with the help of music. She begins the book with a letter to her younger self, writing, "No matter what things look like now, you are worthy and deserving of all the attention, love, protection, care, conditioner, and fancy dresses in the whole wide world."

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It's a poignant message that Carey previously echoed in 2020's "The Meaning of Mariah Carey," which she also co-wrote with Davis. In the memoir, she recounted being ostracized as a biracial girl growing up with a white mom and Black dad.

"The constant question was, 'What are you?' Not 'who are you?' but 'what are you?' " Carey says. "It made me feel like a thing – it did not make me feel like a human being. That was mainly the reason I wrote ('Meaning'): to emancipate my little girl self. And she's never really left me."

Now, with "Christmas Princess," the five-time Grammy winner wanted to write something uplifting for "all the people who have ever felt othered," she says. "It's a short little book, but it really does have a deeper meaning."

Carey traces her intense love for the holiday season back to her childhood. "Even if I received a Christmas gift that was a piece of fruit literally wrapped up in newspaper, I just had the spirit of that magical time," she says.

She hopes to bring that same sparkle to her fans – or as she calls them, "Lambs" – with the return of her famed Christmas concerts next month. Carey will play Toronto's Scotiabank Arena on Dec. 9 and 11, before heading to New York's Madison Square Garden on Dec. 13 and 16. The set list will primarily feature tracks from her two Christmas albums – 1994's "Merry Christmas" and 2010's "Merry Christmas II You" – along with a few other songs that "I've never performed live before," she teases.

"I'm trying to make (these shows) as magical as possible," Carey says. "Oftentimes as a child, or even throughout earlier parts of my career, I did not feel loved. I certainly never felt unconditional love and that's what I have with my fans: that connection. So I'm extremely excited."

Looking further ahead, Carey has more than 175 hours of footage from what she calls her Butterfly Lounge studio sessions, which she hopes to turn into a documentary. She also hints at the possibility of a live show commemorating her "Butterfly" album, which turned 25 in September. (Those songs "need their own thing," she says.)

The music icon says she's open to acting again, after appearing in Lee Daniels' movies "Precious" (2009) and "The Butler" (2013). But for now, she's reteaming with the filmmaker to develop a TV series inspired by her memoir. Although the project is still in its early stages, she's given a lot of thought to casting who should play her.

"I don't think it's about 'cast the girl who sings the Mariah Carey style,' whatever that is," Carey says. "It's about casting a great actress with a somewhat similar look and just making sure the acting is there. Because we have the music – they can sing along to it."

Like the book, the show would follow Carey from childhood through adulthood.

"I did start very young, and there's several passages of time we go through," Carey says. "But I do not acknowledge time. Please make sure the world knows my new rule: If I'm not allowed to ask any questions if I'm hiring somebody new, or if we're not allowed to say this or that, no one's ever allowed to put a number next to my name ever again.

"Unless it says – parentheses – 'eternally 12.' If you can make that happen, then you're the king of the world."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mariah Carey talks Christmas book, casting autobiographical TV series