Forget Mariah & Kelly Clarkson. Why Brenda Lee Is Still Rockin’ The Billboard Charts W/ Her Christmas Classic! Now Retired At 77, Brenda Still Goes Caroling Every Holiday Season!

"Forget Adele and Mariah Carey. There’s another legendary pop diva topping the charts this holiday season.

That would be Brenda Lee, whose 1958 holiday classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is at No. 3 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 — right behind Adele’s “Easy on Me” and Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” — 63 years after its original release.

Lee, who is the only woman to be inducted into both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame, recorded the Christmas chestnut in 1958. She was just 13 at the time. Thirty-two years later, the song had a cinematic revival after being featured in 1990’s “Home Alone.”

“It was a Christmas miracle,” Lee, 77, told The Post over the phone from her Nashville home. “When I went to the movie, I knew right then that it was gonna be a standard.”

Now, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is having yet another moment thanks to a seasonal surge that has also led to Top 10 positions for Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” and Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

Here, Lee shares the secrets behind her holiday classic, what she thinks about being back at the top of the pop charts, and how she decorates her own Christmas tree.

Congratulations on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” still going strong 63 years later.

Isn’t that amazing? It has just been a gift to me, written by a wonderful man named Johnny Marks, who was Jewish and didn’t even believe in Christmas, but the only thing that would come out of him was Christmas songs. He wrote some of the great standards for Christmas [including “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas”]. And I asked him, “How did you write ‘Rockin’?” And he said he wrote it on the beach in New York [while watching] the pine trees swaying in the summer.

How does it feel to be No. 3 on the charts this week, right behind Adele and Mariah Carey?

Well, you know what, if I’ve got to be behind anybody, that’s pretty good company. I love Adele, and I love Mariah. I love “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Once again, it’s an original song. And for that and “Rockin’” and the other originals to compete with “Silent Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and all the wonderful standards that have been around for years and years and years, it’s pretty darn good.

What did you think of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” when you first heard it?

I really loved it because, unlike the [traditional] carols, it was a rocking kind of a song. I just had a ball doing it. It took us probably two takes. It was in the summer, and Owen [Bradley, the producer] had it all decorated up like Christmas, and it was just precious.

Do you still sing the song during the holidays?

Well, I’m retired now. But we sing it at Christmas [family gatherings]. People will say, “Come on, sing a little bit of ‘Rockin’.” And I go caroling, believe it or not. I love to carol every year.

Do you have any special way you usually decorate your Christmas tree?

My Christmas tree is a lot of lights and a lot of ornaments that I’ve had since I can’t even remember. I’ve kept them all. Some of them are pretty raggedy-looking, but I wouldn’t replace them for anything." - Pagesix.com