The Hallmark Channel: Christmas Cure for Curmudgeons

If you’re a curmudgeon then Christmas is a tough time of year. All the Christmas music that starts after Halloween, the caroling, the commercialization, the crowds, the credit card bill with the national debt balance that comes due just in January, the griping, the moaning, the audible sighing… I can sympathize as I’ve walked in your fuzzy Christmas slippers and worn the ties that sing carols. I’ve found an antidote for those of us who have had Christmas burned out of us and yet feel vaguely cheated somehow -- my family namesake’s TV alternate universe, The Hallmark Channel.

I discovered a couple of years ago The Hallmark Channel comes up with 12 new original Christmas movies every year to help you count down to Christmas. I’ve come to believe one must work on your weaknesses in order to become a better boy and Christmas has been a weakness of mine since my days running computer and electronic stores. Retail will take your Christmas heart and stomp that sucker flat. My wife has contributed to this Christmas cheer reduction with the three threes and 50+ bins of decorations that have to be huffed and puffed down from the attic, enjoyed for a short period and then packed back up the stairs with me grabbing my chest from time to time like Fred Sanford.

Christmas decorating for me is a lot like writing a novel. I like “having decorated” and “having written” better than doing the actual decorating or writing processes. To my dismay I haven’t produced a novel either in present or past tense, but I’ve decorated for the 22 years we’ve been married. Not exactly a monster track as life’s work goes I’m afraid. I also admit to liking “having undecorated” to bring the house back to normal more than I probably should.

So, I’m probably not the demographic Hallmark Channel plans for when developing these Christmas vignettes. Yet I recognized a couple years back that my wife loves Christmas and I love her and there ought to be some equation that allows me to love Christmas again for her sake and sanity. I remember worrying as a little guy that we didn’t have a chimney in our house, just a pipe up on the roof that I was sure a jolly fat man couldn’t fit through. I’m not sure how my parents explained that one away. Maybe they didn’t and that sparked my original sin of cynicism.

It’s also surprising that my pathway to Christmas normalcy is The Hallmark Channel, named not after me but the Hall family of Kansas city, who usurped our name and don’t pay us royalties. But I can’t put up a copyright infringement suit as my family name was supposed to be Candiland if some antiquity illegitimacy had been ironed out. So, I use their legacy as a way for people to remember my name upon introduction – “Hallmark, just like the greeting cards.”

I’ve strayed far afield from the original subject of this post, which was to trumpet the tonic that Hallmark Channel Christmas movies has provided a Christmas curmudgeon. My wife and I watch lots of cop shows, doctor shows and mysteries with dramatic elements often colored darkly. There is a desperate dearth of actually funny comedies on television. Last year we tried the Robin Williams show and Mom and tapered them off as raunchiness wasn’t really funny.

Hallmark Channel programming is a good change of pace to mix in with Blacklist, Justified, Person of Interest and Elementary while waiting for Downton Abbey to come back. The tangled webs woven by How to Solve a Murder or House of Cards delight us but the predicable plots of Hallmark Channel are somehow soothing after a long day with the horrific news and sad circumstances of the world.

Ah yes, the Hallmark Channel Christmas movie plots. Easy. Boy meets girl, they don’t mesh at first and then they sort of do, then something happens to drive a wedge between them, then about 30 minutes left someone – Santa Claus, an angel, a dead grandfather or maybe just a friend does or says something to bring them back together before the end, which is always happily ever after.

Schmaltzy and cheesy, I know! But it’s a welcome break to watch two attractive people do the Mistletoe mating dance and come to a positive conclusion.

I don’t think I ever wavered from the true meaning of Christmas, the Star, the Child and the

Miracle first Christmas gift given by God. It was all the other stuff that had grown up around Christmas I couldn’t get my arms around for an embrace. A steady diet of egg nog, hot chocolate and Hallmark Christmas movies seems to be helping me bridge the cynic gap and start to enjoy the other side of Christmas again. I’m even finding myself singing Christmas carols to myself although I tend to change the words around because that’s what I do. No – L, No-L, you can spell Christmas without using “L”.

I’ve also discovered I can hire some of the manual labor of Christmas. Grand children looking for cash are obliged to help haul all the stuff up and down the two flights of stairs and help decorate. But that’s okay as I just write that off with all the other bills that come due in January. If you’re going to embrace Christmas, it’s gonna cost you.

This afternoon we’re going to church to sing at the 3 p.m. service, then come back for the Christmas Eve dinner at our house. There will be the scavenger hunt through the house for the kids and grandkids working from diabolical clues I’ve labored over. Then after the first round of presents are opened and the family departs to their dwelling to wait for Santa’s arrival, Jan and I will settle down to watch our favorite Christmas movie, The Holiday.

Three years of mainlining Christmas cheer through the 12 movies of Christmas are paying off. I’m starting to be able to relax and enjoy all the season entails. We just finished Annie Claus is Coming to Town to get us primed for the Christmas Eve festivities. I'm going to sing in a proper mood of wonder and anticipation.

Merry Christmas! Thanks Hallmark Channel from the real Hallmarks themselves!