Feel The Love

I was doing some serious channel surfing the other night when I came across the Hallmark Channel. I usually surf right on by, but I was feeling Christmasy and a Christmas movie was on (what are the odds?) so I gave it a quick minute.

Apparently there’s more than a handful of the Hallmark Faithful out there, as the network churns out roughly 800,000 new Christmas movies a year (maybe an embellishment, maybe not). The new films add to their trillions of existing ones, sure to be running on a never-ending loop until the End of Time. They’re all pretty much the same movie of course, with different actors and characters’ names on rotation. I was barely a minute into the one I was checking out (and already having viewer’s remorse) when it hit me:

Hallmark Christmas movies are just the television equivalent of romance novels, with some holiday cheer sprinkled in for good measure.

You’d think I would’ve remembered. Ha! It’d be great if they occasionally put out a Christmas movie that was about…oh Idk…the meaning of Christmas or sumthin? Or hey, maybe some that are all about dogs or circus clowns or anything other than the constant deluge of Paperback Love. When did Cupid hijack Christmas anyway?

After a moment of pondering all this, I realized I was still holding the remote, and that I have access to far more channels and streaming services than a cavedude needs. A couple minutes of professional scrolling later, I hit the jackpot with the 1965 classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that had just started on another channel.

There’s timeless magic in this Charles Schulz gem, from the storyline (good ‘ol Charlie Brown searching for the real meaning of Christmas), to the soundtrack (the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s jazzy piano-y vibrations are good for the soul) to the throwback to simpler times.

 “I never thought it was a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all really. Maybe it just needs a little love.” – Linus Van Pelt

Christmas Love has a heartbeat, and it sounds a lot like that.

I hope you feel it this holiday season.