You know you love it. C’mon, you know you love it. We’re talking about Hallmark Christmas movies, of course. Well, Hallmark/Lifetime/Ion Christmas movies, to be exact.

By now, year three of my Hallmark Christmas movie review, you ought to know that there are a few elemental rules of said movies:

• Someone is teaching someone else the meaning of Christmas.
• A city slicker finds magic in a small town
• Saving a town that’s going to go bankrupt because they’re shutting down a toy factory
• Someone is in the wrong relationship (usually dating a rich jerk)
• Someone is a secret relative of Santa
• Someone trades places or gets a glimpse into the future
• A businessman falls in love with his penniless assistant, or a woman loses a promotion to her boss’s relative, then falls in love with them

Grownups making Christmas wishes to Santa.

Two teachers fighting over a single dad during a cookie bakeoff.

Event planners unwittingly planning the Christmas weddings of their ex-boyfriends, then walking down the aisle themselves.

Why do these movies keep drawing us in year after year?

Maybe there’s profound wisdom in Hallmark movies we don’t know about. They navigate us through the serious consequences of finding out your in-laws are Santa Claus or your boyfriend is royal. Take, for example:

My Santa

A single mom falls for a mall Santa and he awakens her belief in the magic of Christmas. However, this Santa is hiding a secret from her: he’s the son of the real Santa Claus.

This one gets triple points for use of a single mom, a mall Santa and finding out your boyfriend’s related to Santa.

Then we have:

The Flight Before Christmas

A woman gets dumped before Christmas and decides to fly home for the holidays, but her flight’s diverted due to a snowstorm. She offers to share the last room in the bed and breakfast with a man she met on the plane, even though they don’t get along.

Something tells me this stranger is good-looking, kind to children, and probably the misunderstood head of a philanthropic organization.

Finding Christmas

A displeased New York City executive swaps houses with an unhappy North Carolina repairman.

It’s easier to find the meaning of Christmas in someone else’s house. Or someone else’s body.

A Christmas Kiss II

An unexpected kiss occurs between a wealthy playboy and a woman who works for his sister. Being cautious, the woman tries to ward off his charms by faking a romance with her neighbor, but then she realizes this billionaire’s affections may be genuine.

Not the “unexpected kiss between a wealthy playboy” storyline again. (After all, the only sane thing to do in that circumstance is fake a romance with your neighbor.)

Merry Ex-Mas

A divorced couple are trapped at a family ski cabin with their relatives at Christmastime and the wife’s new boyfriend is about to propose to her.

Minus four points for a horrible title.

Merry Kissmas

A newly single woman finds herself torn between two men after she kisses a handsome man on an elevator around the same time that her former boyfriend begins to treat her right.

I take it back. Minus five points…And what’s up with this new trend of kissing people in elevators? (Can this trend come to Nashville?)

Christmas Mail

A postman is recruited by his boss to spy on his pretty co-worker, whose job requires her to respond to every letter addressed to Santa.

Not sure what disturbs me the most here – the creepy boss, the spying co-worker, or the fact that we’re writing fake letters from Santa.

Back to Christmas

A woman travels back one year in time to the Christmas before her broken engagement and tries to repair what went wrong, and discovers that this is a challenging undertaking.

Time travel usually is hard work. I wonder if this one has Christopher Lloyd and Einstein popping in and out of the scene with frenzied warnings about life-altering Christmas paradoxes.

I’m Not Ready for Christmas

A successful businesswoman suddenly loses her ability to lie after her niece makes a wish to Santa.

Wait, that’s a thing?? I’m having a meeting with my own niece immediately to see if she can wish for a rich boyfriend for Aunt Mandy.

If my life were like a Hallmark movie, I’d meet a stranger in a coffee shop, spill coffee on them and in return be given a magical ornament that would let me see the future, in which I’ve had it all wrong in my cynical blogs…Christmas lights can save your soul, and Christmas cookies can help you find love.

Hallmark movies have no villains. Only misunderstood people who discover the true meaning of Christmas and decide they want to give their riches away.

Am I a hopeless romantic, or merely trapped inside my DVR for the month of December?

I don’t have the answer for you this year, dear reader.

The Hallmark movie binge continues.

If living in a snowglobe is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

 

Merry Christmas.

And a happy New Year, where all your dreams come true.

 

 

You can read last year’s Hallmark Review here.