Hilary Duff released Holiday Things on October 23, returning to Christmas music twenty-four years after Santa Claus Lane. The five-song EP includes three original compositions and two covers. One of them, Last Christmas (Mine), revisits the Wham! song she recorded during her early career, joining a new version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas within an already busy year of recording activity.
Hilary Duff has brought the festive season forward with Holiday Things, a five-track EP released digitally on Friday, October 23. The project marks a return to a part of her catalog that began with Santa Claus Lane in 2002. Rather than another full-length album, the new release combines a short selection of original songs with two established Christmas compositions.
Hilary Duff announced the project on Instagram on October 21, only two days before it became available. An image with a festive setting accompanied her remark that Christmas seemed to have arrived early. The complete EP subsequently appeared on digital music services, allowing listeners to hear the five recordings weeks before December and before the physical editions planned for later in the year.
The original titles are I Guess It's Christmas, All You Want for Christmas Is Me and I Want (A Few Small Things). They sit beside Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Last Christmas (Mine). That balance gives the release newly written material as well as songs audiences already know, extending her personal recording catalog rather than relying entirely on familiar seasonal standards.
All You Want for Christmas Is Me should not be confused with Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. Similarities in their titles do not make them the same composition. The track is one of the three originals on the new EP, while the Carey recording has its own separate place within Christmas pop and the holiday listening calendar.
Hilary Duff also adds I Guess It's Christmas and I Want (A Few Small Things) to that original material. The confirmed tracklist identifies both songs, but the release information does not supply a detailed account of their lyrics or production. Their inclusion establishes new writing within the project without requiring claims about a musical arrangement that would need a separate, close assessment.
Last Christmas (Mine) creates the clearest link with her early career. The Wham! recording originated in 1984, and she previously recorded the song in the period of Santa Claus Lane. The latest version returns to that familiar material twenty-four years later, preserving the title while adding the Mine designation associated with her recent work revisiting older recordings.
That connection follows the April 2026 project (Mine), which presented newly recorded versions of songs from her previous catalog. Returning to Last Christmas applies the same principle to seasonal material. It offers another performance of something she has sung before, without making the current EP a reissue of the original Christmas album or suggesting the new recording is simply the old master repackaged.
The other cover, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, comes from an earlier tradition. Judy Garland introduced it in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis, and performers across several generations have recorded it since. Hilary Duff's version joins that history, placing a song associated with American screen music beside a pop hit from the 1980s and the three new compositions.
Her return to holiday material had already been signaled by an October 15 post marking the twenty-fourth anniversary of Santa Claus Lane. She shared the cover alongside family photographs and early promotional material, expressing affection for that period. The anniversary post preceded the EP announcement, bringing the earlier release back into view shortly before the new project became public.
Hilary Duff released Santa Claus Lane when she was primarily known through television, introducing many listeners to her recording work before the larger commercial breakthrough that followed. Metamorphosis came in 2003, with So Yesterday and Come Clean helping establish her pop career. That music connected with an audience also familiar with Lizzie McGuire, giving the early catalog several overlapping routes into fans' lives.
Hilary Duff began the current recording year with Luck… or Something in February, her first studio album of new material in more than a decade. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. The April rerecordings then brought songs including Come Clean, Wake Up and What Dreams Are Made Of into another phase of that return, combining new writing with a renewed relationship to older work.
Earlier in October, she also released CATastrophe for The Cat in the Hat. Holiday Things therefore joins a year containing a new studio project, revisited catalog songs and music connected with a film. Those releases have different functions, with the Christmas EP adding its own short seasonal selection rather than replacing the other material she has presented.
Her live schedule includes Australian appearances beginning with Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena on October 24 and planned iHeartRadio Jingle Ball events in the United States in December. Dates have also been announced for 2027 across North America, Europe and South America. No separate Christmas tour devoted exclusively to the five-song EP has been announced alongside the recording's release.
Hilary Duff's Holiday Things is available digitally from October 23, with CD and vinyl editions scheduled for December. The later physical release gives collectors another format while the five recordings are already available to hear. Its mix of three originals and two covers connects the current recording period with the Christmas music that helped introduce her voice in 2002.
