By Anita Garner
Starting the last weekend in October we’re reminded again that in Christmas movies small town living always works out best, that city people are driven and can’t put down their phones, and a holiday movie will help everyone change for the better. This is my annual Christmas movie post. It doesn’t really require updating because some things don’t change, but here are a few details to watch for.
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Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies have started. You can still get a snack without pressing pause and you won’t miss a major development. Thank goodness. Our favorite plots are all still there, faithful in every detail. Here are some things that happen in every Hallmark Christmas movie.
In the big city, twin evils of ambition and technology conspire to rob our leading man or woman of their true selves. A trip to a small town or a farm will be required. Along the way, flights will be delayed. Cars will be stuck in the snow. Wardrobes will need to change.
1945 movie, Christmas in Connecticut. Not a Hallmark movie, but worth noting that the plot features a famous entertainer forced to learn to decorate a Christmas tree without wearing flannel.
Today’s movies acknowledge that expensive clothes could be ruined in the weather. So we get beautiful and country-fied cold weather wardrobes.
All this unfolds in a charming cabin or an inn. Oh but there are problems in the country too. The heating at the inn might quit or the owner is days away from eviction. Worse yet, the visitor from the city is actually a scout from some big, cold-hearted company that plans to change things.
As these movies move along, cell phones are thrown away, big job offers are turned down, snow storms create white-outs that bring commerce to a halt, forcing our hero or heroine to slow down and learn some Christmas lessons; how to toast marshmallows, trim a tree.
There will be baking, and flour may be tossed around in a getting-to-know-you romantic way. Hands will meet over cookie cutters.
Everyone is happier wearing plaid.
Turns out people in the little town are the kindest, most generous folks anyone’s ever met. Our main character falls in love with the town and also with a former sweetheart who stayed there all this time and is miraculously single.
It’s happening again right now. Christmas movies with happy endings. Fine with me. I like my holidays predictable.
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