Hallmark movies get a lot of grief during the holiday season. People tend to roll their eyes at the predictable storylines and scoff at the irrationality of the neatly tied together endings.
But I am unashamed to say that when Hallmark Christmas movies start airing, nothing brings me more joy than ending my night by watching one. If I top it off with a mug of warm apple cider and a fresh bowl of popcorn, I find myself cured of any blues that may have been afflicting me that day.
Last year, my roommate and I had a tendency to just turn the television onto the Hallmark channel when we got back from classes. It was our way of awarding ourselves for getting through the day, and it turned our tiny dorm room into a cozy holiday escape from the stresses of school.
There is something so comforting about Hallmark Christmas movies. You can be assured when you start the movie (or even if you come in at the middle) that there will be a happy ending. You don’t even need to know the plot to know that everything will work out—a fact that some people find annoying, but I find it to be reassuring because we don’t really get that in life, do we?
Happy isn’t always guaranteed, and when we’re going through a tough time, we don’t know where the ending lies. Sometimes, we feel like there will be no ending at all. A truth that I’m sure both the haters and lovers of Hallmark Christmas movies will agree to is that the stories they tell are nothing like real life.
Luckily, I don’t watch them for a how-to on surviving life or finding love. I look to them for a break from reality. I don’t mind entering a dream world for a little bit—in fact, it is just what I need.
I need smiling faces and twinkling lights to combat the gloomy darkness that stress tends to leave in its wake.
I need snow falling like soft cotton and picture perfect Christmas cookies because my own life feels so messy and imperfect.
I need a guarantee of an overly sentimental happy ending because I have no clue where my own future lies and that scares me.
I like knowing that I will get all these things in a Hallmark Christmas movie. The predictability is comforting during a time when I don’t know even know how I’m going to write three papers in a week, let alone what lies beyond that week.
Curled up watching Hallmark movies is my time to sink into something a little merrier than my life appears to be at the moment, all with the knowledge that I will have to return to my life afterwards. However, I find myself a bit more capable of handling it. The movies allow me to step away from daily anxieties for a little while, and just focus on the good. I can, then, come back feeling refreshed and a little bit more hopeful, not to mention teeming with the Christmas spirit.
So there’s my defense of the often attacked Hallmark Christmas movie, which was perhaps as overly sentimental as the movies themselves. But what can I say? I’m a sucker for happy endings.