I became a Belieber more than a decade ago in summer, but my love for Justin Bieber felt like it mattered the most during Christmas.
Christmas in Pennsylvania used to be magical. I remember the times it was actually cold enough to snow in December. Being snowed in automatically meant we were going to have a cozy, jolly but mostly drunk-off-of-hot-chocolate time. Christmas and birthdays were really the only time my siblings and I were ever given anything. Growing up middle class in Pennsylvania means you have to earn your small luxuries.
If did my chores, made my bed and dusted our house, it was only then I earned my allowance money. My diligent dad would give me a couple of dollars as my well-earned reward. So week by week, month by month, I’d save up every bill to buy an iTunes gift card. I would use this trusty $15 card to buy some of the pop music that would change the course of my life when I was 12 years old.
That was in 2011, when I purchased Bieber’s Christmas classic “Mistletoe” on my iPod Touch. A mere $1.29 would fundamentally shift my adolescent life forever. The dopamine hit that fired into my brain while hearing Bieber’s teenage falsetto felt like Christmas morning magic. This was an era of my life when boys just became an endless parasocial fantasy, and Bieber in particular was who I had my sights set on. I would call myself a big Belieber back then. But in my Evangelical household, I attempted to keep my obsession with Bieber a secret — one only he and I would know about — my parents be damned.
In “Mistletoe,” the 17-year-old pop star sings, “It’s the most beautiful time of year. Lights fill the street spreading so much cheer.” Oh boy, he was right. I don’t know if you’ve heard “Mistletoe” but it’s almost impossible to ignore the sense of whimsy and lightness hearing Bieber sing that he doesn’t want to miss out on the holiday, “But I can’t stop staring at your face. I should be playing in the winter snow. But I’ma be under the mistletoe.” I can remember hearing “Mistletoe” on my way to school in my earbuds or it playing during a Christmas party at school.
While I felt like I was the special someone he was singing to in “Mistletoe” so did millions of other girls. The song sold 164,000 copies in its first week of release, placing it at No. 5 on the Billboard charts. Currently, the Christmas bop has nearly one billion streams, sitting at the top of Bieber’s most popular songs on Spotify with 800 million streams. So let’s just say, with 500 million views on YouTube, I know I wasn’t going to be actually kissing Bieber under the mistletoe like he was singing about.
Beliebers, unite
I’ve been a Belieber since the early days of his career when he was discovered on YouTube,