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Each year, record companies compete for the Christmas number one single spot on the British charts. Having the UK Christmas number one is very prestigious and leads to a lot of media coverage. Since people are buying gifts for the Christmas period, single sales are extremely high in the week before Christmas, and since the Christmas number one is the single with the highest sales, record companies can make sizable profit from trying to get their single to Number One. Many people place bets at a bookmaker's on who will be Christmas number one.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the subject of the Christmas number one began to excite significant media coverage. However some believe it dates back to 1973, when two of the most successful bands of the day - Slade and Wizzard - both released Christmas-related singles ("Merry Xmas Everybody" and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" respectively) in an attempt to clinch the festive chart-topper, with Slade ultimately coming out on top.

The definition of the Christmas number one single is the entry at the top of the official UK singles chart released on the Sunday before Christmas Day, or Christmas Day itself if it falls on a Sunday. (The weekly charts are announced on Sundays covering the sales from the previous week.) Therefore, if Christmas Day falls at the end of the week, records bought in the last few days before Christmas do not play a part in determining the "Christmas Number One".

The Christmas number one formerly went most often to sentimental, Christmas-related or novelty songs - a fact parodied in the plot of the movie Love Actually - although this has become rarer in recent years.

The race for the Christmas number-one of 2002 was focused on by the British ITV television programme Popstars: the Rivals, a reality TV show that formed an all-male and an all-female pop group - One True Voice and Girls Aloud respectively - and made them compete for the Christmas number-one spot. Girls Aloud, a band that still achieves huge success in the UK today, obtained the spot with their single "Sound of the Underground" and therefore ultimately won the contest. This has been further continued with The X Factor, also broadcast on ITV in the UK, in which the winner's single is released the week before Christmas in order to contend the number one spot. Many have criticised this and its proponents, such as Simon Cowell, for hijacking the charts and eliminating any element of surprise in awaiting for the number one single. Also, many of these songs do not revolve around Christmas at all. This may continue into 2007, as a fourth series of The X Factor is currently in production, due to end on 15 December 2007.

See also List of Christmas number one singles.

Main article: Christmas number two

Examples of songs which reached number two in the Christmas chart include "Last Christmas" by Wham!, that lost out to Band Aid but still became the best-selling single in the UK that failed to reach the top spot; "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues, kept off by Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always on My Mind"; "JCB Song" by Nizlopi, which was kept off the top spot by reality TV star Shayne Ward's "That's My Goal" and "Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)" by The Darkness, kept off once again by a cover version, this time Gary Jules' rendition of Tears for Fears' "Mad World". Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" also only reached number two, however is still popular twelve years later entering the UK download chart weeks prior to Christmas.

The Christmas Number Two is set to become the new Christmas Number One because of The X Factor and from 2007, bookies began betting on the Christmas Number Two.

• Christmas song
• Christmas carol

• BBC News story: Have a chart-topping Christmas