Hallmark Christmas movies are filled with dead spouses, parents and grandparents. The trend is so prominent that, as we drank hot chocolate and watched “Christmas at Dollywood” together, my 8-year-old daughter asked me, “Why are there so many dead moms and dads in these movies?”
Those familiar with Hallmark movies will likely appreciate this film’s plot description from the Hallmark Channel website: “When a NYC event planner returns to Tennessee to plan the Christmas celebration at Dollywood, she’s paired with the head of operations who thinks he can handle the party just fine on his own.” A big-city dreamer finds love with a small-town charmer, and the plot is as saccharine as it is predictable.
In part, my daughter’s question was sparked because the day before, we had watched “The Christmas Shepherd,” in which a widowed children’s book author in a small Massachusetts town tries to track down her lost German Shepherd and finds love with a widower in the process.
Since my parents died over 10 years ago, the Hallmark Christmas movies have helped me process their deaths.
Likewise, in “A Scottish Christmas,” a newly released 2023 movie I watched a few days ago, the heroine loses her mother, and her father is the widower who finds love in this film. Yet this plucky heroine, who is of course a New Yorker, doesn’t miss out on the fun. She helps a handsome Scottish man (from a small town overseas) overcome the grief of losing his mother, too. Their shared loss bonds them. (Spoiler alert: At the end of the movie, she shows up to a Christmas ball wearing her Scottish beau’s mother’s dress, given to her by his grizzled but loveable father.)
Let me say here that my daughter and I are not alone in our viewing habits: 3.3 million viewers tuned in for Hallmark’s premier holiday movies at the end of November, making the network the third-most watched cable channel last month. Still, a question remains: Why would we watch essentially the same movie again and again, year after year, knowing its outcome?
Until recently, my answer might have been simply that “It’s fun” or “It’s nice to have on in the background while baking cookies or wrapping presents.” Yet my daughter helped me realize something that I wouldn’t have been able to articulate in years past, but that rings true to me now, even as it surprises me: Since my parents died over 10 years ago, the Hallmark Christmas movies have helped me process their deaths.
I don’t seek theology in Hallmark movies; I seek consolation.
I write “process” and not “contemplate” here purposefully. As a professor, I am used to intellectualizing even the smallest moments that happen to me, not to mention the big ones, such as losing my parents. When we process emotions, we become attuned to how emotions impact our hearts, and, over time, accept the good and the bad of these feelings as part and parcel of our whole selves. I don’t seek theology in Hallmark movies; I seek consolation.
Here’s the thing: The repetition of plots in Hallmark movies is part of the experience. Hallmark movies remind viewers over and over that it’s possible to find love after grief. They do not convince us of this through a persuasive message within a single, complex film. Instead, they collectively address grief openly and effortlessly. They affect our hearts through breadth, not depth. Rarely, do you hear someone say “I love that particular Hallmark Christmas movie.” Instead, it is “I love Hallmark Christmas movies.” These love stories offer solace to the soul, not by presenting a singular, definitive truth within an individual movie, but rather by creating a cumulative, affective experience that leads us to a greater truth.
In a homily on death in 2015, Pope Francis articulated that: “It is necessary that Pastors and all Christians express in a more concrete way the meaning of the faith in regards to the family experience of grief. We should not deny them the right to weep—we must weep in mourning—‘Jesus wept’ and was ‘deeply troubled’ by the grave loss of a family that he loved (cf. Jn 11:33-37).” Unlike Jesus, our contemporary society urges us to shy away from acknowledging grief. We present curated versions of our lives, complete with filtered photos and crafted narratives, rendering the raw emotions associated with suffering taboo. After losing someone close to us, we take two weeks of leave from work (if we are lucky), and then we come back, smiling, pretending.
Hallmark movies, with all their sentimental predictability, break through our social norms about emotions. In this way, they are anything but conventional.
Hallmark movies, with all their sentimental predictability, break through our social norms about emotions. In this way, they are anything but conventional. They unapologetically showcase characters navigating their sorrows in the same ways they would if they were adjusting baking temperatures to obtain the perfect holiday cookies. In doing so, they offer a refreshingly unpredictable departure from the glossy façade of our daily interactions, where the default response to “How are you?” is often a swift “I’m fine.”
In addition to the loss of my parents, in the last 10 years, I’ve lost four uncles, an aunt, my children’s godmother, two mentors, my husband’s grandmother, and a cousin who was like a surrogate father to me. I have attended so many funerals that I worry I’ve lost count of them. I dread when people ask me about my family or where I grew up because, inevitably, it prompts a discussion about my sorrow. Over the years, I’ve learned how to eschew seriousness in favor of blitheness, especially during the Advent and Christmas seasons when discussions of holiday travel and festive traditions lead one inevitably to talk, and reminisce, about family.
In navigating my path through numerous losses, particularly in a post-pandemic world marked by the shadows of terrorism and war, I don’t believe I’m alone. Rather, grief likely resonates on some level with nearly every reader of this article. Almost all of us feel a void left by someone whose presence once made a particular holiday experience or tradition feel complete.
Almost all of us feel a void left by someone whose presence once made a particular holiday experience or tradition feel complete.
For many of us, Hallmark movies, with their perennial themes of love and resilience and their perennial place on our yearly calendars, provide comfort that may not easily be relayed to others. For me, these movies feel as if they reflect the cycle of hope and renewal found in the Advent season specifically. Much like the anticipation of Advent and the hope embedded in the Incarnation, these film’s plots and themes remind us of the cyclical nature of life—of joy and sorrow, love and loss. Moreover, their plot repetition is reminiscent of the hope Catholics feel each year in observing the liturgical calendar. We may know what is to come but that does not make the experience—neither the anticipation nor the fulfillment of promises kept—any less spiritually satisfying.
So, what did I tell my daughter about why Hallmark movies depict so many widowers and so much grief? I said, after pausing, that it’s because life does, too. Just as the Christmas story teaches us, suffering is near the surface of any love story. Advent and Lent are as important as Christmas and Easter. The interplay of joy and sorrow is what renders life, with all its complexities, so profoundly beautiful, or heartwarming, as one might describe a Hallmark movie.
That we respond to Hallmark movies with our emotions rather than our intellect does not make our human responses to them any less true. It is this search for truth, I believe, that inspires us to return to these Hallmark movies year in and year out. In watching them, we find solace and hope. Yes: We find a piece of Christmas.
