It’s September and I’m away at college for my first semester when I get a text from home: “The Hallmark Channel is filming a movie in our small town of Old Wethersfield.” My cousins and I all get in touch. This is the funniest thing to happen since Kevin The Turkey was hailed as town-wide celebrity for walking through the middle of traffic. The whole town got a huge kick out of what was about to be our five minutes of fame.
No one in Old Wethersfield can deny that it’s the perfect place for a heart-warming, very cheesy Christmas film. It’s my home and I know that from its historic qualities and small town charm, it’s a great setting for a Hallmark.
In Old Wethersfield, we have all of our own traditions for Christmas time, from the way we decorate the street to how we come to celebrate together during an annual winter festival. However, the Hallmark Channel was going to shoot the movie in the fall in order to have it out during the holidays. Soon, I was receiving photos of the town decked out in fake snow and lights. Christmas came early!
I think the best part of this whole ordeal was the town’s participation. Our familiar and beloved landmarks set the scene, people got to be extras, and Hallmark even incorporated some of our own traditions. In the movie there is a winter festival, which is very much like our Holidays On Main. At that event, there is the traditional tree lighting. For shooting this movie they strung up the lights on our big pine tree months before the holiday season. I think there was definitely something special about this for the people of Old Wethersfield, who got to share a bit of our home and the traditions we love.
Once the extremely brief filming and editing process was done, Hallmark Channel whipped up the movie and it was ready for watching. My family had a little viewing party of Christmas On Honeysuckle Lane (Yup). We enjoyed seeing Old Wethersfield on the big screen, and had lots of laughs. My hometown got its five minutes of fame, and we’ll never forget it. Go watch Christmas On Honeysuckle Lane on the Hallmark Channel!
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