Mariah Carey wants her kids to have "everything" after her own "messed up" childhood.

The 52-year-old pop star - whose track 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' has gone on to become the best-selling Christmas single by a female artist since its 1994 release - is mother to 11-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe with ex-husband Nick Cannon and explained that the festive time of year just makes her "happy" after enduring such a life "transformation."

She said: "Darling, look, I know a lot of the time people are like, 'Oh, yay! Look at her! She’s, like, so festive and such a Christmas girl', or whatever. But, really, Christmas makes me happy. People think I had this princess-style life or whatever, a kind of fairy-tale existence where I just emerged, like, 'Here I am!' And that is not what it is. I doubt you have enough time to write about all that, so we won’t go into it. But when you grow up with a messed-up life and then you’re able to have this transformation where you can make your life what you want it to be? That is joy for me. That’s why I want my kids to have everything they can have. I want them to be able to understand that they can be anything they want to be."

The 'Always Be My Baby' hitmaker - who is thought to earn an estimated $2.6 million in royalties from her Christmas song every year - went on to add that she "loves" being able to give extravagant gifts because it is something she was not able to do as a child.

She told W Magazine: "[The twins] make a lot of the stuff that they give to me. Wait, hold on; I think the tooth fairy forgot to come last night. But she’s very generous, the tooth fairy, so I think they have enough saved up and accumulated that they could actually buy me something this year, which would be amazing. I love giving them gifts, because the act of opening up a ton of presents is something I wasn’t able to do as a child."