Why do we watch Hallmark holiday movies, year in and year out? In 2024 alone, the channel pumped out 32 original films for the holiday season, with new premieres starting in October and continuing every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the rest of the year. Many of them have interchangeable titles, like “Believe in Christmas,” “The Christmas Quest,” and “Confessions of a Christmas Letter.” It’s totally natural to turn on one of these movies and think, “Haven’t I seen this before?”
After all, so many of these movies are the same, down to the identical green and red sweaters everyone seems to wear on every poster. They all have the same few types of characters with the same few types of jobs, getting into the same sort of holiday shenanigans while falling into the same types of romances.
But, like a treasured Christmas cookie recipe that we return to every year, having the same ingredients doesn’t mean we’re bored of the results. In fact, quite the opposite is true: The fact that everything’s the same is exactly why these movies work as perennial favorites. Familiarity breeds comfort!
Probably nobody said it better than holiday movie writer Samantha Herman, who told Entertainment Tonight, “I think it’s nice to have a respite for two hours and just feel family, and spirit, and holiday, and love, sealed with a kiss … It’s like comfort food. Spoiler: they’re always going to get together.” With that in mind, here are 10 things that happen in every Hallmark Christmas movie.
Someone returns to their small hometown
Hallmark Christmas movies are basically Westerns. Like that most American of genres, they’re all about the undeniable pull of small-town living, or how a rustic life is more fulfilling than a chaotic one in the city. As a result, just about every Hallmark Christmas movie involves someone returning to their small hometown and being drawn back to a simpler way of life. It’s all about how the ordering force of civilization can lead one to lose touch with one’s roots, and a return to the hometown means a return to the self.
This is such a cliché at this point that Hallmark has leaned into it, even occasionally subverting the trope. In the aptly named “Small Town Christmas,” for example, a successful big-city writer on a book tour winds up stopping by a small town … which turns out to be the hometown of a man she once met in the city. Of course, they fall in love. It’s also the plot of “Haul Out The Holly,” a film where Christmas movie queen Lacey Chabert, playing a woman named Emily, goes back to her small hometown, only to find that her parents have left for the season. Usually, it’s the family that brings people back to themselves, but in this case, her character gets drawn into a local Christmas decorating contest … and wouldn’t you know it, she falls in love in the process.
There’s a conflict between small and big business
In addition to dealing with the conflict between small-town and big-city living, so many Hallmark Christmas movies are also about the conflict between small and big business. That’s also a trope right out of Westerns; it’s the plot of one of the best Western movies — “Shane” — which pits rustic individualist farmers against wealthy land barons threatening to buy up the town. On the Hallmark Channel, however, people only tend to be farmers if they’re farming Christmas trees; otherwise, these movies love to pit toy store proprietors, pastry chefs, cookie bakers, and the like against encroaching big business. How can a soulless corporation understand the festive wants and needs of the average person the same way a small business owner can? (Actually, maybe these movies have a point!)
Bonus points, of course, if the small-town business owner falls in love with someone who represents big business. That’s what happens in the generically-titled “Christmas in Love,” in which a small-town baker charms the hunky, out-of-touch CEO whose conglomerate just bought the place where she works. In “Gingerbread Miracle,” a woman who’s moved back to her small hometown tries to help a local bakery find a buyer who understands the magical charm of baking in small towns; will she fall in love with the baker’s son or the guy who’s trying to buy the place? Why don’t any of these movies end in throuples?
A Grinch rediscovers their love of the holidays
In a Hallmark Christmas movie, you can’t have a fulfilling career, be in love, and also maintain your holiday spirit … at least, not at the beginning. As a result, many of these movies involve someone who’s over the holidays, for whatever reason. Usually they’re just too busy with work to think much about Christmas, or about dating. Through the power of love and small-town living, they manage to rediscover a love of not only Christmas, but themselves.
In the Hallmark movie “Naughty or Nice,” for example, former “One Tree Hill” star Hilarie Burton plays a woman who works at the mall who just can’t be bothered with Christmas. She’s a bit of a Grinch, a Scrooge, a humbug, and it’s only through the power of accidentally being given Santa’s Naughty or Nice list that she comes around on the joy of the season. The 2022 movie “Ghosts of Christmas Always” is about this too; this twist on “A Christmas Carol” finds a Ghost of Christmas Present trying to convince a depressed man that Christmas is worth celebrating. (For the record, he’s played by Ian Harding, who starred in Netflix’s “Our Little Secret” with Lindsay Lohan.) The message is clear: no matter what else is going on in your life, it’s nothing a little hot chocolate and a cheesy pop cover of “Jingle Bells” won’t cure.
The town comes together
While most Hallmark Christmas movies are about the power of moving back to a small town, they’re not only odes to individualistic living as opposed to big-city lifestyles. They’re movies about how small communities are better than big ones because in small towns, people support each other. Let’s not talk about the way that real-life small towns can be quite unwelcoming to anyone who doesn’t fit the norm.
As a result, just about every Hallmark Christmas movie has a scene where the town comes together, and we get to see a bit of local flavor. There are town meetings, Christmas decorating competitions, holiday parades, diners that serve as local watering holes, and so, so many ice-skating rinks, where you’re of course very likely to run into an old family friend. In “A Christmas Love Story,” they throw a pageant. In “A Christmas Melody” — a Christmas movie starring Mariah Carey! — it’s a Christmas variety show.
In “Finding Santa,” the town even turns out en masse for Santa Claus auditions, hoping to find a Santa who will ride in the town’s Christmas parade. Would people in a city audition for things like that? Okay, probably, but would one of the potential Santas be a hunky love interest? And would they be as charming as Eric Winter is in this movie? Checkmate.
People are named things like Holly, Eve, Nick, and Chris
When the archetypal Hallmark heroine goes back to her small hometown to help out the family business, it’s super common for her to fall in love with a guy named Chris. Or Nick. Or Noel. Her name is probably Holly, Eve, or Faith — because in these movies, everybody’s name always seems to be related to the holiday season.
Sometimes, Hallmark pushes this trope way past the breaking point of believability. In “Naughty or Nice,” the woman who accidentally gets sent Santa’s Naughty List is named, incredibly, “Krissy Kringle.” She spends the whole movie insisting to people that, yes, her name really is Krissy Kringle. The movie “Christmas CEO” is a wild one, too, because it’s not just about a CEO at Christmas. It’s about a woman CEO, and her name is Christmas, because why not. In “Miracle in Bethlehem, PA,” a woman who has recently adopted a child goes to stay in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, only to learn that there’s no room for her at the inn. Her name is Mary Ann, and she falls in love with a hunky local named Joseph.
The classic example of this came in 2012, in a Hallmark movie starring Carrie Fisher. It’s an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” but this time called “It’s Christmas, Carol!” Fisher didn’t play Carol, though; she was simultaneously the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. And of course, her real name was Eve.
Whimsical head trauma is all too common
Hallmark Christmas movies love to take inspiration from other famous Christmas stories, which is why so many resemble “A Christmas Carol” or “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Both classics involve a character getting to examine their life; in “A Christmas Carol,” the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future show Ebenezer Scrooge what he’s missing, and in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” an angel shows George Bailey (James Stewart) what the world would be like without him. Some Hallmark movies are direct adaptations, but a lot of them go with simple alternate-reality stories that let their characters see what their life could be like if something was different. And the way these movies choose to get their characters to this place? Whimsical head trauma.
Yep, that’s right: Hallmark loves to give a woman head trauma and make her forget details about her life, which she must re-learn as she rediscovers her love of the holidays. In “Christmas On My Mind,” for example, Ashley Greene plays a woman who gets in a car accident; when she wakes up, she can’t recall the last two years, so she thinks she’s still in love with her ex. Mira Sorvino also gets into a festive car crash that leaves her with amnesia in “A Christmas to Remember” — get it?
Sometimes, Hallmark subverts the trope. In “A Gift to Remember” — no, really, do you get it? — the person who loses their memory after a Christmassy biking accident is a man!
Magic exists, and no one minds
When you’re a kid, it’s easy to believe in the magic of Christmas. After all, Santa Claus visits every single house in the world in the space of one night, bringing presents to all the good little boys and girls with the help of his eight magic reindeer. As an adult, however, it can be hard to recapture those childhood feelings. If you were to suddenly learn that those flying reindeer actually exist, it would probably break your brain a little, forcing you to reconsider your whole conception of the way the world works.
On Hallmark, though, people encounter Christmas magic all the time, and it rarely causes them to go into a full-on mental breakdown the way that people in the real world probably would. The channel’s holiday offerings are littered with magical items that bring joy to the main character’s world, granting wishes and making cheery things happen. There’s a magic pen in “Letters to Santa,” a magic stocking in “Magic Stocking,” a magic locket in “A Christmas Secret,” and a magic clock in “A Timeless Christmas,” which, for the record, is one of the best Hallmark Christmas movies. In “A Magical Christmas Village,” it’s — you guessed it — a miniature holiday village that makes dreams come true. In “Magical Christmas Ornaments,” it’s … okay, you get the idea.
People resist the obvious romantic partner
All sorts of people fall in love in Hallmark movies. Come to think of it, actually, they’re usually straight and usually white. We should say that people with all sorts of relationships fall in love in Hallmark movies. A childhood sweetheart, a family friend, a handsome stranger, your amnesia doctor who’s accompanying you back to your small hometown … it doesn’t matter. The only constant in a Hallmark Christmas film is that you can’t fall in love too quickly.
These are romances, after all, and it simply wouldn’t do to make the couple get together right when the movie starts. Instead, characters spend the entire film ignoring the obvious. We can all see at home that they’re meant to be together, but it takes festive shenanigans to make them see it too.
Holiday movie writer Joany Kane told Bustle that it isn’t about the destination (i.e. being a happy couple in love) anyway, but about the journey. She said, “We all know how the movie ends. What makes these movies magic is the journey they take us on.” In other words, if a movie is making you want to shout “Just kiss already!” at the television, it’s doing its job.
Someone turns out to literally be Santa Claus
A lot of Hallmark Christmas movies are vaguely faith-based; after all, that’s technically the reason for the season. Plenty more are secular, though, filling their frames with snowflakes, gingerbread, presents, evergreen trees, and more markers of non-religious Christmas. Then there’s Santa Claus. Saint Nick shows up in a fair few Hallmark movies, usually incognito as a normal jolly old man with a twinkle in his eye. We’re often left putting the pieces together ourselves, realizing that in the world of the movie, Santa Claus very much exists.
Sometimes it’s obvious, as in “Santa Tell Me.” That one’s about a woman named Olivia (Erin Krakow) who gets a letter from Santa telling her that she’s soon going to fall in love with a man named Nick; when she meets three of them, she must figure out which Nick is her Nick.
Sometimes it’s a bit less obvious, as in the case of “Christmas Under Wraps,” a Hallmark movie starring Candace Cameron Bure. In that one, she gets a job as a doctor in small-town Alaska. Toys are the town’s biggest export, and the local toy factory — which is manned by short men dressed all in green — is owned by a jolly old snowy-bearded man who goes by Mr. Holiday. That’s enough to confuse her for the length of the movie, and it’s only in the final few moments — after she’s helped heal his reindeer — that she realizes Mr. Holiday is actually Santa himself.
No one has sex
All of these other tropes aside, there’s one thing you definitely won’t see in a Hallmark movie: No one’s gonna have sex. No matter how deeply in love everyone is by the end of the film, the most you’ll ever see is a kiss. It usually happens in front of the Christmas tree, often in front of friends and family — the better to reassure the town that the heterosexual couple has gotten together, chastely! — and there’s never even a suggestion that anything more is going to happen between these newfound lovebirds.
Lisa Hamilton Daly, Hallmark’s Executive Vice President of Programming, told Variety that the channel doesn’t expect to get less chaste any time soon. “Our movies are very much leading up to that final kiss,” she said. “It’s all built up to that … we are never going to be anything but pretty much PG.” This was all on purpose, she said, in an effort to make sure the channel’s programming could stay on television throughout the entire holiday season. “I consider us to be pretty living room friendly,” Daly explained. “You know your kids are never going to walk in and you’d have to turn it off.”
Now, if family-friendliness is not a concern for you and yours, there are plenty of more grown-up holiday movies you could check out. Here’s our list of the best holiday movies for people who want something totally different.
