Nov 24, 2021 3 min read

It’s Thanksgiving week, so to me it’s now officially the holiday season.

My Thanksgiving door decoration will stay in place until Friday although my neighbor a few doors up already has his Christmas lights on and the tree shining through the picture window each evening. I’ll definitely take advantage of the mid-week warm up to rake leaves one last time and possibly string my outdoor holiday lights before flipping the switch on them Friday. Two radio stations were already playing nonstop holiday songs all weekend. I just wasn’t ready for that yet, so I turned off the radio.

Despite my lack of interest in Christmas music, there’s one thing that I’ve already been doing for the past month: watching holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel.

I know, I know … I can’t help myself.

They started airing new ones and reruns around Halloween and I’ve found myself flipping through the channels each evening in search of something fun to watch and eventually landing on the sappy sweet productions and getting hooked.

Go ahead, admit it … you watch them, too.

In fact, everyone I ask admits they watch them even though they’re corny, have oh-so-predictable happy endings and almost always have the same plot. The lead character goes back home, reunites with a first love, has a failed reconciliation with a current love interest with about five minutes to go in the movie then ends up living happily ever after with the first love. In between, there’s always some seasonal festival, concert or cooking competition and some family business that needs to be saved.

You can almost write the scripts yourself because you know exactly how they all go. So why do I still watch them?

You have to hand it to a greeting card company for creating an entire network full of movies devoted to holidays and seasons. That’s the basis of their business. Hallmark was founded in 1910 by the Hall family and is the oldest and largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. The Hall brothers actually invented modern wrapping paper when they ran out of colored tissue paper at the stationery store and instead used fancy French envelope lining paper to wrap gifts. The next year, they started printing their own wrapping paper.

It’s nice to see programming that’s family friendly and I guess one of the reasons I watch those sappy movies is that they’re a nice escape from some of the craziness happening all around us each day. What I can’t believe is that it’s just now Thanksgiving and I’ve already watch probably a dozen or so of their Christmas movies.

What will I do between now and Christmas?

I’m sure I’ll take in the animated Rudolph cartoon and my favorite holiday movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I’m grateful to be able to write this column and to hear from so many of you that you enjoy reading it. Happy Thanksgiving!

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.