On a recent morning, Elizabeth Chan, America’s most successful, and perhaps only, full-time Christmas-song singer-slash-composer, was waiting in a dingy back corridor of Macy’s to meet Santa. Ahead of her in line, children whined and shopping bags rustled. A tinny karaoke version of “Deck the Halls” piped through the department-store speakers. Chan groaned. “It’s really generic,” she said, of the song.

But Santa was Santa, and Chan thought it would be nice for her eighteen-month-old-daughter, Noelle, to meet him. “Everybody has the luxury of dealing with Santa for only a month,” Chan said. She wore a black knit cap and a burgundy coat, and pushed Noelle in a stroller. But, she said, in her household it’s “a year-round issue.”

In 2012, Chan quit her job as an executive at Condé Nast to pursue her dream of creating “a great Christmas standard”—a song like “White Christmas”—that would be sung year after year for generations. There were obstacles: though Chan had a good voice, she wasn’t a professional songwriter. She and her husband, a designer, would have to go into their savings. But she was determined. “Christmas music has a magical ability to transport you to your childhood or happier times,” Chan said. “At least, for me it does.” Growing up in Battery Park City, in a family of Chinese and Filipino immigrants, she loved the traditions: “Writing a letter to Santa, being good.” Each year on Christmas Eve, the family would gather at her uncle’s house, in New Jersey.

For nearly two years, Chan wrote a Christmas song a day. She recorded fifty, paying for studio time and musicians. She sent demos to music producers and to Kelly Clarkson’s then record label. No dice. Her savings dwindled, along with her family’s patience. “They were, like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Chan recalled. “ ‘Go get a real job.’ ”

When Chan was on the verge of giving up, a colleague suggested that she put out the songs herself. A ten-thousand-dollar Kickstarter campaign later, she released an album called “Everyday Holidays.” The single “Fa La La” landed on the 2013 Billboard chart, right between two songs by Clarkson. Chan has now released seven albums and had four Billboard hits, including this year’s “Best Gift Ever,” a song she wrote for her husband which reached the Top Ten earlier this month.

Brian Demay, the corporate program director for Cumulus Media, said that Chan is the only full-time Christmas singer-songwriter he knows of, and that he plays her music regularly on WRRM, in Cincinnati. “My parents raised me on Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, and the Harry Simeone Chorale,” he said. “I would count Elizabeth among those.”

At Macy’s, the line shuffled past some abandoned shelving units. Noelle fidgeted. “This is the least Christmassy thing I’ve done this year,” Chan said, peering behind a door to a staff locker room. “Don’t open it—you’ll find a couple of unhappy elves on their smoke break.” She talked about her songwriting process. Every year, from January to August, she churns out between fifty and a hundred Christmas songs, recording only the ones whose melodies she can still remember months later. They span multiple genres, from “Christmas in the City,” an earnest ballad, to “Vixen,” a naughty-girl pop number inspired by the reindeer name. (Sample lyric: “Don’t get mad ’cause you can’t play these reindeer games.”) “It’s totally eclectic, and that’s what makes it fun for me,” she said.

Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” played in Macy’s. Chan is ambivalent about the song, which Carey crafted “to sound like it was from, like, the nineteen-fifties,” she said. “A lot of artists try to replicate what they think Christmas should sound like.” Chan prefers to focus on her own life. “The Ghost of Christmas Past” is about missing her grandmother. (“The years go by so fast / I thought that it would last.”) Recently, she’s been rediscovering the holiday through her daughter’s eyes. “She’s my enzyme,” Chan said, and asked Noelle, “Can you say ‘enzyme’?”

The line moved again. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”: Yay or nay? “Yay,” Chan said. “But I know it’s very controversial now. People are saying that it’s a song about bullying.”

After an hour, Chan and Noelle entered Santaland at last. An elf waved from a candy-cane visitor’s kiosk. Toy bears and ducks frolicked in winter scenes. A train display whirred below a twinkling night sky. Noelle beamed.

Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” was playing. Chan approved. She hires violinists and cellists for many of her songs. “There’s something about orchestral music that just evokes emotion,” she said.

The elves whisked Noelle and Chan into Santa’s room, where he gamely tried to engage the now stone-faced toddler as an elf snapped photos. Then it was over. Mother and daughter were ushered into another line to purchase the pictures.

Exiting, Chan reflected on the experience, which she described as “weird” and “counter to my philosophy on Christmas.” She was already working on a new song: “In my mind, the verse is, you know, ‘Christmas is not in the store.’ ” ♦