I miss watching Hallmark Christmas movies with my dad

Back in November I wrote an essay about…well, what the title of this post says. And then I completely forgot to pitch it! Lucky for you, I can just post it on this website. Enjoy—and have a very happy holiday season.

The 2023 Hallmark Christmas Movie lineup is stacked. Fake royalty, fake dating, time travel, and romantic trips to Norway, France, Germany, and Scotland. The Scotland movie features Lacey Chabert, who starred in an Ireland movie just two years ago, and an Italy movie two years before that. 

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to watch Chabert’s continued Napoleonic march to conquer European hotties. My dad was the one with the cable account, and he died earlier this year. 

My dad and I are both unlikely HCU (Hallmark Christmas Universe) fans. Dad was, in a word, grumpy. Inanimate objects bore the brunt of his anger, not people—but I wouldn’t describe him as a peace on Earth, goodwill toward men sort of guy. And I’m a Millennial woman covered in tattoos who regularly listens to punk and metal. I was desperate to escape the relatively large suburb where I grew up. Moving to a small town sounds like a nightmare. 

But whenever the holiday season rolled around, you could find both of us on the couch binging whatever holly-jolly schlock Hallmark had to offer. And after my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, their sugary sweet Christmas movies became a necessary balm. 

My sister and I shared chemotherapy duties: every two weeks, I’d drive from my home in Louisville, Kentucky to Dad’s condo in southern Wisconsin, where he’d moved after my mom died. Early in the morning, I’d drive him an hour south for treatment—his insurance didn’t cover anywhere closer. I’d work remotely on my laptop while he sat in a recliner for several hours, a machine pumping a bag of poison through a tube and into the port in his chest. Then I’d drive him back, get him settled on the couch, and try to convince him to eat something for dinner, however small. 

For Hallmark, Yuletide begins even before Halloween. That means romantic holiday comedies were part of Dad’s post-treatment regimen for nearly three months. I was exhausted, he was exhausted and sick and weak and miserable—but we could both escape into a tree decorating contest or a family cookie shop or a town’s annual mistletoe festival. All of these are probably threatened by a scheming property developer, but it’s fine, because that developer will inevitably fall in love and let the spirit of Christmas into his heart. In reality, the stakes were high for my dad. But in the HCU, they were blessedly low. 

Part of the fun was mocking the films, of course. My dad was a small business owner, so he was perplexed by the economics of so many Christmas-themed businesses on a single street in a rural area. I always wondered why the characters in these movies wore a different winter coat each day—those things are expensive! But I won’t pretend our love for the genre was exclusively ironic. 

Hallmark Christmas movies are a paradox: they present both a conservative vision for life, and—in certain ways—a liberal vision for love. The conservative aspect is more obvious. Any woman with a corporate career at the beginning of the movie will happily give that career up by the end of the movie to marry her high school sweetheart. It’s fine for a woman to work in a shop, though—preferably a family business. Having children is a must. Small towns are superior to big cities. On the other hand, Hallmark movies are the only media I can think of where women over 30 are considered worthy of love. Women who have lost their husbands, single parents—they regularly get second chances at love in these films. Even the parents of the 30- and 40-something characters get to fall in love. The HCU boldly presents a world where romance doesn’t end at 25. 

My conservative father and my liberal self (he liked to call me a communist, but socialist is more accurate) could both find things to admire and aspire to in these movies—and neither of us was grinchy enough to completely deny the appeal of Christmas magic. The lights! The carols! The eggnog (Dad) and cocoa (me)! My dad was colorblind, so he famously wrapped our gifts in black and brown tissue paper one year, thinking it was red and green—but on the Hallmark channel, Christmas is always perfectly wrapped and topped with a bow.

This is the first Christmas I’ll have without both of my parents—and I won’t have Hallmark Christmas movies, either. I’m sure Netflix and Hulu will serve up a few knockoffs, but it’s not the same. I know all too well that the “perfect” Christmases of the HCU don’t truly exist. I’m not sure I’d even want them to exist. All that decorating seems like a lot of work, and I have no desire to give up city living. 

If any department store Santa out there is secretly real, however, or if anyone knows of a reliable star/ornament/snowman to wish upon, I have a few requests. It’s been a rough year, and I could use a Christmas miracle. But I’d settle for a friend with a cable subscription and time for a movie marathon.