Since Moma always said Jesus didn’t approve of me hating anything, to keep Moma and Jesus happy, let me say this - I have the utmost disdain for Hallmark Christmas movies. I’d say hate but I’m not letting a little thing like a Hallmark movie keep me out of heaven. Why such strong feelings? Well, for starters, every movie on the Hallmark Channel is basically a cookie-cutter version of the next with the same set of characters set in the same sickeningly sweet scenarios.
Practically, every one of these movies features a frazzled baker jaded by love frantically trying to get her gingerbread house built, cookies baked or meringue set just in time for the big winter festival, carnival, or church bazaar. Sprinkling sugar that looks like fairy dust on perfectly shaped Christmas cookies and eating them all without gaining an ounce, the typical Hallmark hot chick baker’s hair is always perfectly curled whether she’s slaving over a hot stove or flirtatiously engaging in a snowball fight with the village’s most handsome and most eligible bachelor. Change the baker to an innkeeper desperately trying to save the historic old hotel from financial ruin and what happens? She too ends up with perfectly curled hair throwing snowballs at some super-hot heartthrob. A little too predictable for me.
My distaste doesn’t just stop with the predictability of it all. I would wager to say that Hallmark Christmas movies are responsible for 90% of the holiday weight gain that occurs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s with all their bread baking, cake icing, and sugar sprinkling. It’s virtually like watching a two-hour infomercial for holiday carb loading which is the last thing I need to see. Just try to make it through one Hallmark movie without suddenly getting the urge to bake, ice, or sprinkle something. I dare you. Watch too many of these movies in a row and their sticky-sweet goodness will make your jaws hurt like when you lick all the icing off a Golly G’s cinnamon roll in one sitting.
Yet with all this aversion, I still wound up watching six hours of Hallmark Christmas movies while putting up my Christmas tree and guess what y’all? By the end of the second movie, I had quit decorating the tree, popped a bucket of popcorn, and was fully engrossed in the third movie - a movie all about, you guessed it, a baker jaded by love frantically trying to get her gingerbread house built while trying equally as hard not to fall in love with the town’s most gorgeous, kind, and eligible bachelor… and I didn’t hate it. For a few hours, I forgot all about nukes in Korea, unrest in the Middle East, political bickering in our nation, crime in our city streets, and problems in my very own home.
While I may not end up with perfectly curled hair and a perfectly baked gingerbread house by Christmas, I’m determined to find a little Hallmark Christmas movie in each and every day this holiday season – that and Hallmark’s secret to binge eating Christmas cookies without gaining an ounce.
