12 days of Christmas: Hallmark movies
Hallmark Holiday Movies Are Undeserving of Your Hate
A variety of B-list actors, directors and film crews don’t bundle-up in Christmas sweaters and parade around in fake snow in the middle of July just so you can be ungrateful towards their holiday cheer when whatever winter-themed movie they were working on is finally broadcasted.
Sure, cable-produced holiday movies are cheap, unrealistic, annoying and cringe-worthy. At best, they are sugary-sweet hallucinations of reindeers and romances, but that’s what is so great about them. They do not deserve the hate that people fling their way.
Take Hallmark, for example, who begins airing holiday-themed movies in mid-October and doesn’t stop until roughly February. This year, the cable channel is airing 34 new Christmas films with casts you probably saw in reruns of that 90s show. That’s 100’s of jobs created just so you, your mom and your grandma can binge while making gingerbread houses and decking all the halls with mistletoe.
In my book, that is an irreplaceable service in our society.
If Hallmark movies are too romantic and pure for your tastes, then head on over to the Lifetime Movie Network or Disney’s FreeForm channels, which are both also airing multiple new holiday films for younger adult audiences. Even Netflix and Hulu are getting in on the original Christmas content creating films like Vanessa Hudgen’s “The Princess Switch” and Kurt Russell’s “The Christmas Chronicles” which both are laughably bad, but at least they make it feel like Christmastime.
There’s nothing more deserving of the term “entertainment” than a formulaic holiday movie. “Good” movies make the audience feel too much and “great” movies require too much thinking. With TV holiday movies, one can just stream the spirit of Christmas right into their bloodstream and ride that high until Dec. 26 when the New Year’s Eve movies start playing.
If you really want to hate on Hallmark movies, don’t make it about their cheesiness and cliche’d endings. Instead, complain about every character being white, straight, upper-middle class brunettes who happen to not like Christmas or love.
Happy binging.
—erickwood97@gmail.com
@GrahamWoodMedia