The unlikely songwriter behind this festive tune is Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider. The heavy metal vocalist wrote the song under the title "God Bless Us Everyone" as a Christmas gift to his wife, Suzette. Unfortunately, Snider couldn't sing it as it wasn't in his range, so he had some studio musicians record his ditty for Suzette. Producer Ric Wake kept a copy and called Snider four years ago to tell him Celine Dion wanted to record the song.

Snider agreed as long as nobody revealed his identity, because he feared Dion would change her mind if she discovered the man behind the tune was a controversial rocker. He recalled to the Talk is Jericho podcast, "The first thing I said was, 'Does she know who wrote it? Do not tell her Satan wrote a Christmas song! Seriously, dude, just put it on the frigging album.'"

In 1999 Dion and Rosie O'Donnell redid the song as a duet on the talk show host's A Rosie Christmas album. The pair also opened O'Donnell's Christmas special on ABC with the tune. "I'm sitting at home watching it, my wife's crying, and I'm thinking 'This is just too much,' " Snider recalled to The Washington Post. "At the end, the camera pulls away and they're broadcasting into Times Square with Rosie and Celine and the children's choir holding candles, singing 'God Bless Us Everyone …"

"I just wanted to pop out from behind the curtain: It's me! It's me! Merry Christmas!"