Even though the winter season has come and gone, it’s never too early to be excited about the most festive time of year by way of Hallmark’s upcoming movies. With the holiday season comes Christmas movies and with Christmas movies comes Hallmark’s wonderful Countdown to Christmas lineup that has become a tradition in many households across America. Hallmark mainstay Jonathan Bennett, who had a personal connection with his most recent Christmas movie, got real about the guilty pleasure of the fan-favorite event.
Hallmark basically celebrates Christmas year-round, whether that’s filming Christmas movies in the summer so they’re ready by the end of the year or doing their Christmas in July lineup to get people ready at the halfway point. It’s all in preparation for Countdown to Christmas, with dozens of new, cheesy holiday flicks and hundreds more in the Hallmark vault. While many may deny that they watch them, Bennett told The Hollywood Reporter he knows otherwise:
There are two types of people in the world: There are people that watch Hallmark Christmas movies, and liars. Everyone likes a Christmas movie, it just is part of pop culture. The way I approach this was, let's plug Finding Mr. Christmas into the pop culture zeitgeist of Christmas movies at the holidays, which everyone watches.
Sure, the Hallmark Christmas movies aren’t those you’d find on the big screen, like Home Alone, The Santa Clause, or any other classic holiday film. But you can’t help but still be sucked in to the cheesiness and the clichés, especially if you’re a sucker for romance. Bennett certainly makes a good point. Hallmark movies are definitely guilty pleasures, and he used his reality Christmas show to explain it even further:
So if you take those tropes of a Christmas movie, the meet-cute, the apology scene, the breakup scene, the ice skating, if you take all those tropes and find a way to gamify them … Now this show isn’t just for the Hallmark viewer, this show is for everyone. It becomes something that everyone can watch and it’s guilty pleasure television.
Considering Hallmark Channel has been around for years and is continuing to pump out so many Christmas movies each year, both in the summer and in the winter, people are still watching even if they know how the movie will eventually end. With the classic tropes that are used in every movie, not only does it make the film an easy watch, but it also gives people at least a little bit of an escape from this crazy world. Instead, they're brought to instead seeing a town come together for a Christmas festival or former neighbors falling in love again over a snowy walk in the park, etc.
That being said, a lot of people can’t help but hate on the Hallmark movies because of how cheesy they are and how many times the idea is used for a Christmas movie, but Bennett is likely right that they are lying because of what they are all about. At the very least mostly everyone has probably done some channel surfing and landed on Hallmark Channel in the middle of a movie and couldn’t help themselves but to continue watching. And I can’t say I blame them, no matter how long they lasted.
Meanwhile, Hallmark is already making plans for this holiday season with something new by airing a Christmas-themed limited series. Of course, fans will also be able to look forward to many delightful films and romantic happy endings that will continue to be guilty pleasures, whether people want to admit it or not.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
