Why Hallmark Christmas Movies Are the Cure for What Ails My Stupidly Simple Soul
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Just a small town girl with a fatal weakness for living in a corny festive fairytale world
Every year, when November hits, I get an undeniable hankering for it. I try to stay clean, I attempt to get a hipper festive film fix with Netflix, but the truth is I really only want to plug my veins into the purest visual hot cocoa and peppermint xanax of feel good around. They tempt me like an irresistible sleighbell’s ring siren song.
Hallmark Christmas movies, I wish I knew how to quit you. You just hit different from the rest. You’re the impossible dream, the long lost crush or mythical perfect man who loves Christmas, the abandoned youthful dreams, the perfect snow globe magic dust small town world that we some of us are willing to suspend disbelief and pretend exists somewhere out there still.
I know you are bad for me, I tell myself every year that I am too good for you, too smart for your predictable storylines, cliched characters and pat happy endings. I roll my eyes and laugh at your hackneyed setups, I snort in derision when you have fake looking snow sets in California (we all know Canadian filmed Hallmark is where it’s at) or sub-par romantic leads with no chemistry.
I have standards, and I rate you all on a ruthless Christmas movie scale of 1–10. I am your most ardent servant, while at the same time being your biggest critic.
I have certain expectations of you, and sometimes you live up to all of them, and much like the first sweet hit of eggnog and sugar cookies, it keeps me coming back for more, year after year. You’re smart, too, you know what I want. When you are good, you are very good.
You have a way of casting that hot guy from that show we had a crush on ten years ago that maybe didn’t get the big breaks, or that pretty but not annoyingly so woman we have seen in some stuff who we can sort of relate to, you know, if we had become a ceo of our own company or were orphaned but also perhaps secretly due to inherit a large fortune that would solve all of our as well as our hometown’s church/orphanage/Christmas tree farm’s problems.
We know that we too would be a regular Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol should the situation…
