Whenever our daughter, Hannah, visits over the holidays, we spend a lot of time streaming movies — most often Hallmark Christmas TV movies. They’re the visual equivalent of easy listening music and also offer many opportunities for making snarky comments and predicting lines, events and character arcs.
My wife, May, hypothesizes that all you need to do is come up with some punning title related to Christmas, and Hallmark will make a movie to fit it.
That said, Hallmark has made more Christmas movies than you might be willing to believe. You could spend all the Twelve Days of Christmas watching them without pause and not see the same one twice. In fact, you wouldn’t have seen all — or even half — of them. Hallmark pumps out 20 to 40 of them each year, and they’ve been doing that for some time now. Estimates of the total vary, but 500 seems reasonable (and is not the highest estimate at that).
How can they produce so many thematically related films and maintain originality? Well, they can’t, really; but that’s not why folks watch them. You don’t drink hot chocolate in the winter because you expect each cup to taste different. The expected warmth and flavor are the appeal, and that’s pretty much the case with the Hallmark Christmas films. Family togetherness, hometown values, (secular) Christmas traditions, nostalgia for a time that really never existed outside of fiction, and a healthy dollop of romance outweigh plot and character.
Certain themes prevail, such as the rigid businesswoman returning to her hometown for the holidays (because she’s broken up with her boyfriend or else has been ordered to commercialize some aspect of the town) and eventually warming to the idea of helping preserve the Christmas pageant, the local bakery or inn, or something else which does not mesh with the crass business world; she also finds love with a former boyfriend or a charismatic stranger.
Another theme has a prince or princess falling for a commoner while on an incognito sojourn away from their palace, as in this year’s “A Royal Montana Christmas.” The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently featured a skit with Prince Harry centered around these royal Christmas films and Harry’s supposed desire to appear in one.
Some sub-series bear titles that reinforce the notion that you’re watching links in a (popcorn?) chain. “Three Wise Men and a Baby” (2022), obviously modeled after the popular mainstream film “Three Men and a Baby” (1987), has three brothers returning home for various reasons to live with their mother (who happens to be played by Margaret Colin, who played the Tom Selleck character’s girlfriend in the earlier film) who get stuck with an abandoned baby over the Christmas holidays. Its relative success led to “Three Wiser Men and a Boy” (2024), where the brothers, having moved out of Mom’s house, move back in while managing a school Christmas pageant for the son of one of them. And in “Three Wisest Men” (2025), the brothers have to deal with Mom selling the family home before Christmas, among other Yuletide problems.
My favorite series, even though I haven’t seen a single one, has to be: “Time for Me to Come Home for Christmas” (2018), “Time for You to Come Home for Christmas” (2019), “Time for Us to Come Home for Christmas” (2020), “Time for Them to Come Home for Christmas” (2021), “Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas” (2022) and “Time for Her to Come Home for Christmas” (2023). Different plots and characters (at least superficially) in each, but, sad to say, Hallmark has run out of object pronouns to decline, unless they start on recently created gender-specific pronouns, though that’s definitely out of their wheelhouse. Or they could try “It” and have Pennywise or a robot Santa bring a couple together at Christmas.
If you’re wondering how Hallmark can produce as many films as they do, it’s easy. They operate somewhat like the old studio system and have actors, directors and writers who work on multiple projects that don’t take very long to shoot. Seeing the same faces (such as Lacey Chabert, who has starred in 40 or so Hallmark films) reinforces a sense of familiarity and family. And actors also do duty as directors, writers and producers (they naturally know what sort of scripts Hallmark will accept, after all); Chabert, for example, has written two screenplays and produced over two dozen Hallmark titles.
Hallmark’s holiday output is overwhelmingly (secular) Christmas-themed, but it has also been marginally ecumenical. They’ve made one Kwanzaa film, “Holiday Heritage” (2022), and nine Hanukkah films: “Hitched for the Holidays” (2012), “Holiday Date” (2019), “Double Holiday” (2019), “Love, Lights, Hanukkah” (2020), “Eight Gifts of Hanukkah” (2021), “Hanukkah on Rye” (2022), “Round and Round” (2023), “Hanukkah on the Rocks” (2024) and “Leah’s Perfect Gift” (2024). “Round and Round” is “Groundhog’s Day” on the seventh night of Hanukkah; but note, groundhogs are not kosher!
So, whatever you celebrate around this time of year, Hallmark has something for you. And if you’re not religious, you can still watch the Hallmark Christmas movies, because they aren’t, either. In fact, Yuletide Films might be a more appropriate name for them.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news-gazette.com ’
