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The true meaning of Christmas. Well, the true meaning of Hallmark Christmas Movies.
Christmas Eve has always been a fun day in the Bastiat household. The kids were always so excited and happy, with all the anticipation, and all the preparation for the big day. Just wonderful. We’d cook food and wrap presents, of course, but to burn off their nervous energy, we always had an activity for them. For years, on every Christmas Eve, we took them ice skating. Until it became clear that these cute little kids were obviously future Division I scholarship athletes, which meant that their cute little knee ligaments suddenly became worth millions of dollars. So we stopped going ice skating, and we found other activities.
To this day, the girls love doing something on Christmas Eve. Some sort of activity that we can all do together. This year, they came up with a good one.
My girls are all in their early to mid-20s. The oldest is married, and the other two are in serious relationships, I think likely to get engaged soon. And, for whatever reason, they all love Hallmark Christmas movies. When I point out that some of these movies are a bit, um, amateur – well, my daughter just shrugs her shoulders and says something like, “They’re about decent people doing nice things. They make me happy.” I can’t think of a better endorsement, really. But for our Christmas Eve activity this year, they didn’t want to watch Hallmark Christmas movies — they wanted to write them.
They decided on this game: Each sister would write a Hallmark Christmas movie about another sister and her husband/boyfriend. And then they took turns reading them out loud to everyone. Combined with some Christmas cocktails, the plotlines became more and more Hallmarky, and the laughter grew louder and louder. It really was wonderful. I love that sound — everybody laughing until they can’t breathe. So, so wonderful.
Suppose my daughter “Jill” is writing a plotline about my daughter “Jane” and her husband “John.” A basic plot would sound something like this:
Jill is an overworked, stressed-out corporate lawyer who is sent to a small town to buy their Children’s Hospital and tear it down to put in a development. She meets John, a sensitive guy who wears flannel shirts, builds birdhouses for endangered species, and teaches Jill the true meaning of Christmas. They fall in love, save the Children’s Hospital, and open a cute little birdhouse store.
Now, that’s just a rough outline. They went on and on and on and on and ON. With everyone shouting out ideas for subplots and accessory characters, leading to more laughter and more shouted suggestions.
I wish I had recorded all this. But I’m glad I didn’t — some things should be enjoyed at the time, but not necessarily recorded for posterity. It was a glorious evening.
As you might imagine, all this got my propeller spinning a bit.
CNN would describe my daughters as dangerous right-wing radicals. This means that around 85% of the American population would describe them as normal. They understand that reality is real. They work hard. They all majored in some type of math or computer science, they all work in consulting now, and they all do quite well. They all have husbands or serious boyfriends and hope to have a family someday. Again, just normal 20-something young women.
And I was fascinated by their ham-fisted portrayal of the stereotypes found in Hallmark Christmas movies. Here are a few themes I picked up on:
- Corporations are evil.
- Doing something for your own self-interest is bad. Whatever it is.
- Doing something for charity is good. Whatever it is.
- Doing things for rational reasons is bad.
- Falling in love is irrational, and thus, is good.
- You should follow your heart, not your brain.
- Building things (developments, etc.) is bad. We should value what is already here. Sentimentality is a reasonable way to make decisions. Or a beautiful and good way, at least.
- My daughters made fun of the head-in-the-clouds birdhouse-building flannel shirt wearer, but they also made fun of the uptight, self-important girl-boss with the BMW. Too many examples to list here, but I found that fascinating.
- Hallmark, like Charles Dickens, uses Christmas to illustrate the darkness, as well as the beauty, of human nature. Which I also find fascinating.
- The ability to laugh at something does not mean that you think poorly of it. In fact, it may mean that you think highly of it. (I think that leftists struggle with this.)
- Hallmark Christmas movies can be beautiful, insightful, and silly. All at the same time. Just like my daughters.
My wife and daughters are getting home soon. Hitting the post-Christmas sales at the outlets, of course.
So I don’t have time to ruminate on all this. But I’d love to hear your ruminations in the comments below.
Christmas is beautiful. In so many ways.
God bless us, everyone.
Published in General
This is right. Just like our dinner out with four neighbors last week that began with the server dropping two glasses of wine in one set of neighbors’ laps, and another one getting “prime rib” that neither looked nor tasted like said prime rib and was inedible. The memories of that dinner will be even better than the actual event.
Sounds like the Our IX Lives soap opera sub-plot within Breaking Cat News. The latest began here:
https://www.gocomics.com/breaking-cat-news/2024/12/01
Most Sundays and holidays are not on the Our IX Lives story.
I too wrote a related post about Christmas and Hallmark.
At this time, women are watching incredibly sappy Hallmark movies, the men are watching Die Hard, and the children are unusually well-behaved. We go out wearing gaudy clothes and singing strange songs about figgy pudding even though no sensible person has eaten figgy pudding for decades. A visitor from Mars would find American Christmas strange and ridiculous. Of course, he would be right.
But through all the silliness and tinsel and wrapping paper, the traditions are based on something that connects human beings to each other.
I am fine with sentimentality around Christmastime but for the rest of the season humanity should strive to be like a mix of Thomas and Aristotle. Logic > Emotion.
CNN would describe themselves as a news organization. They’d be better off building birdhouses.
I like but I don’t agree.
We record a few of these each year to watch while planning and wrapping. Hallmark cranks out each movie in 3-4weeks in the same locale in Vancouver. 35 and 40-something actors play 29-year olds. The scripts are happily formulaic.
Old people are kind and wise. People with remarkably trivial occupations have rather nice homes. Decorations are flawless. The occupation of the hard-charging big city woman is fiscally absurd. The purpose for her extended visit/return to the idyllic small town makes even less financial sense. There is always a handsome, single veterinarian/baker/handyman/manager of some family small business.who opposes her mission as they fall in love.
The average age in Hallmarkville is above the national average. The children who appear are invariably terrible actors.
The predictablity is strangely endearing and addictive. There are no serial killers, rapists or racial tensions in Hallmarkville. No snide, dark humor. And nice things happen to nice people.
It sounds like you and your family had a fabulous time together. What fun! A delightful and loving way to spend time together. You are blessed with a wonderful family.
Did anyone else let out a loud, evil laugh when they read this?
OK, I finished reading the post. This sounds like a great time. Now that I know it’s not all wood chopping, I want to be invited to a Bastiat family party.
Speaking of Christmas movie parodies, have any of you seen The Christmas Twist? It’s a super low-budget 14-minute movie made by Glenn Beck and his sidekicks. For some reason, someone posted a 12-hour marathon of it on YouTube.
OK, but I’m not coming unless there is wood chopping, too.
That’s what I was doing on January 6, 2021, when I came into the house to warm up and for fresh batteries for my chain saw. My wife told me what was going on in Washington D.C. I took a quick look at the internet before going back out to do more, and later came in to catch up on the news. I did quite a bit of felling, sawing, and splitting that winter and have done very little since. But what could be better than more of that along with Bastiat family story-telling?
In some quarters this would be a revocation of one’s man card.
The warming up or the batteries? Or both?
I have an extra card, though, for splitting my wood with a splitting maul and wedges. Gas-powered hydraulic wood splitters are for wusses. Also for people who aren’t retired and don’t have a lot of time on their hands.
My wife and I like to watch (and gently ridicule) the Hallmark Christmas movies every year. Yes, they’re cheesy and predictable; but as background noise, they’re a better way of creating a Christmassy atmosphere than watching A Christmas Story on endless repeat.
This year I noticed the same lead actress popping up in multiple movies, so I looked her up. Lacey Chabert is known as the “Queen of Hallmark Christmas Movies,” having appeared in more than 30 films on the channel. She has said that she likes doing Hallmark movies because they always have happy endings, and they bring some “light and love” into the world.
In the real world, Santa Claus isn’t real, and small Christmas-obsessed towns — if they existed — would not have viable economies. But I don’t have a problem with movies that depict a world that is different from reality. That’s what movies are for. It’s just when movies preach and try to convince us that reality should be what it isn’t that I get annoyed.
Not sure if this is the response you are looking for but my 2 boys and I also try to find something to do together. My oldest is now 25 and lives in Seattle and my youngest graduates from college this May. When they were younger we would find a Christmas Program to go see like a puppet show or if there was snow on the ground (we live in Lawrence, Kansas so every couple of years there will be snow) we would build snow forts etc. The past couple of years we have been burning brush piles I have collected from cleaning out a pond. Whatever the activity is, it is wonderful…just having a couple of hours with them at this age is the best present one could ever have!!!
Hope everyone had a great Christmas and have a Happy New Year!!
I love all types of movies: action flicks, romcoms, horror . . . you name it.
But even I like to cozy up to a Hallmark Christmas every other Christmas or two. They’re simple, easy to understand, and they have that satisfying ending some writers seem to deliberately deny the audience. After a couple days of wrapping, cooking, eating, unwrapping, and more eating, it’s good to watch a brain relaxant . . .
But writing your own Hallmark Christmas movie? That sounds like fun!
You should look up Don McMillan’s treatment of Hallmark movies…!
After starring in 2006’s “Black Christmas” it’s no surprise that she’d like to be in light, happy movies.
Weird thing, in “Lost In Space” she was too young, and now she’s too old.
“Haha, girls are so dumb they watch Hallmark and think that’s how men are.”
~watches porn~
Humanity loves fantasy of all kinds.