Christmas is supposedly the happiest time of the year, filled with festive activities, delicious meals, and, apparently, the whole reason for the season: quality family time.
Underneath all of the religious and sentimental activities that people find so appealing, Christmas is one of the most profitable holidays to date. Christmas generates hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer spending every year, from gifts, decorations, activities, media, and apparel. Companies pump out Christmas-themed advertisements and sales because they know that people will buy.
One company that has this concept down to a T, building its empire on it, is none other than the Hallmark Channel.
The Hallmark Channel is cable and streaming’s biggest producers of Christmas movies. This year alone, they’ve released 24 Christmas movies, bringing up their grand total (since 2009 when they started making them) to 300 films!
The key to Hallmark films is that they’re eerily similar to one another. The majority of these films have identical or similar plots of a busy, city girl having to go back to her small town, where she finds her love interest and learns the true meaning of Christmas (and life) is love. It’s a simple premise that’s capable of being copypasted endlessly.
Beyond the poor writing, and corny acting, a very noticeable aspect of these films are their cast. The casts and the couples in these films are also very similar, with most of the narratives featuring majority white and straight couples. They’ve recently sprinkled in a little diversity with titles like, “The Christmas Baby,” featuring a lesbian couple, and “A Keller Christmas Vacation,” featuring a gay couple, releasing this year. “Tidings for the Season” and “The Snow Must Go On,” feature people of color as leads. Still, these are few and far between, and are often only available on Hallmark+, Hallmark’s subscription streaming service, and their numbers pale in comparison to the straight, white, formulaic fare the channel is known for.
Hallmark isn’t eager to change this lack of diversity; a lot of their movies’ appeal is the fact that they’re attached to the status quo making them not mentally or morally challenging to watch. Some people see the inclusion of people of color, queer people, and even interracial couples as political, and thus controversial. It’s easier to exist for these audiences when they don’t have to face the apparently terrifying idea of difference.
Half the beauty of a Hallmark movie is its simplicity and predictability, nothing like the challenging and conflicted world of reality. As the Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott told to the New Yorker, the Hallmark Channel is “your place to go to get away from politics, to get away from everything in your life that is problematic and negative, and to feel like there are people out there who are good human beings that could make you feel happy to be part of the human race.” This could be about the many horrible atrocities happening to people every day, regardless of race, sexuality, and gender but it still makes us question why white, straight stories are synonymous with “good human beings.”
This is effective because Hallmark Christmas films are extremely profitable. The films cost about $1 to 2 million to make, while usually raking in around $350 million from advertisers. They can also be made in a short time, usually three months, with only two to three weeks worth of shooting.
This process is obviously fueled by Hallmark’s ever-increasing need to make money; cutting out complexity, diversity and quality to focus on quantity. None of this is surprising. Companies, collectively, will follow the money trail; if they have to cut out quality and diversity to do it, the scissors will be in their hands before you can blink.
But I don’t think the audience is completely at fault. The cable channel is consistently high ranking for women in the ages of 25 to 54, and 18 to 49. Many of them aren’t raging bigots who can’t stand the sight of brown people. My own mother watches Hallmark Channel, especially the Christmas films, and she usually just likes their snowy environments and general positive vibes. She also likes having something playing in the background while she works.
Hallmark Christmas films are a mixed bag. They’re easy, quick cash grabs that people can put on in the background, profiting off of the idea of who society deems controversial and not controversial. But they’re also a reminder of what the holidays are really about, or at least what people want them to be. A time where all of the years’ bullshit, anxiety, and conflict is paused momentarily, so you can enjoy something that doesn’t challenge you, so that you can finally just rest.
Not all art can challenge you. Some art is just a Hallmark Christmas movie.
