Mariah Carey's holiday show set for Madison Square Garden

Mariah Carey, whose last Christmas concert residency in New York was five years ago at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre, returns to Yuletide form with the new revue "Merry Christmas To All!," playing Madison Square Garden on Dec. 13. This and a Toronto show on Dec. 11 are its only two dates.

General-public tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at LiveNation.com. Ticket checkout will offer a tour-exclusive T-shirt for additional purchase, as well as the new children's book "The Christmas Princess" by Carey and her memoir co-writer, Michaela Angela Davis, with illustrations by Fuuji Takashi (Kailyn Lowry's "Love Is Bubblegum").

"It's almost time NEW YORK + TORONTO!!" Carey, 53, wrote on social media Monday "Come celebrate Christmas with me this December! … [I'm] excited to be back on stage and get festive with everybody!!"

Five-time Grammy Award winner Carey, who was born in Huntington and raised there and in Melville, Northport and Greenlawn, has made herself synonymous with the season through her 1994 perennial hit "All I Want for Christmas Is You," as well as holiday TV specials, a children’s book and holiday concert residencies from 2014 to '17 at the Beacon. She additionally closed her 11-date "All I Want for Christmas" national tour at the Garden on Dec. 15, 2019.

Carey's new children's book brings back Little Mariah, a character based on her childhood self, introduced in the 2017 direct-to-video animated feature "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The little girl "doesn’t have much and doesn’t want a lot, but there is just one thing she longs for: a peaceful and joyous holiday season," the publisher's description says. "Feeling outcast and alone, Little Mariah sets off on a wintry, wondrous journey, ultimately discovering the healing power of her voice … ." The $19 hardcover book is scheduled for release Nov. 1 by Henry Holt & Co., an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.

"I think it's just that longing that I had as a child, that I always wanted things to be perfect for the holidays. And they never were," Carey told Elle magazine in 2020. "It was always somebody ruining the moment, always these dysfunctional family members who came around and foiled everything. And so I just made a pact with myself that I wasn't going to allow that to happen anymore." As an adult, "I created the Christmases that I wanted to have."

Carey previously wrote the 2015 children's book "All I Want for Christmas Is You," illustrated by Colleen Madden, about a little girl wanting a puppy as her holiday gift.