The recurring appearance of Mathis holiday releases on the various album charts in Billboard began with 1958's Merry Christmas, which peaked at number three during the four weeks it spent that holiday season on the magazine's biggest album chart (now known as the Billboard 200) and returned to place at various positions within the top 40 slots there for the next four years. When the magazine first had a separate chart for Christmas albums from 1963 to 1973, Merry Christmas ranked somewhere in the top 10 on it for another seven years, and on the Top Pop Catalog chart that was created for older titles, it had eight return appearances during the 1990s. His Sounds of Christmas LP spent two weeks at number two on the Christmas Albums chart upon its 1963 release and re-charted for the next five