And just to update… a wish fulfilled. The marathon starts at noon today!

And there was the headline I’d been waiting for:

Hallmark will air Christmas movie marathon during coronavirus quarantine

Our local paper printed this today as a “report” from another publication. I couldn’t verify it on the Hallmark website, but ironically, just yesterday I’d written the following:

This morning, a friend of ours called. He’s a financial planner, poor thing, of a certain age and the last person on earth I’d expect to sign off with this:

“What we need right now is a Hallmark Christmas movie.”

Those of you who’ve followed my blog from the start may recall that I’ve written two posts about Hallmark’s comically formulaic Christmas movies—‘Twas the season to watch Hallmark Christmas movies” and “Hallmark movies – redux”. These are the cheesy (she said with affection) TV movies that have wiggled their way into almost everyone’s heart, without regard for depth of character, tightness of plot, semblance of realism, or complexity of lesson—in other words, without any of the attributes we’d expect of any other movie. And that, dear readers, is why we need them now.

In the fall of 2017, I had a slightly scary surgery that required several weeks of recuperation, the first chunk of which was spent in bed. Lucky that I came home from the hospital just in time for the start of the “Countdown to Christmas” package at the end of October. Those silly, lovable in-spite-of-themselves movies, binged one after the other, did much to get me over the rough spots, for which I will always be deeply grateful. And then there’s the cool, comforting effect of the “Christmas in July” reruns, without which my considerable, old-school heap of summer ironing (you know, those cute white shirts…) would never get done.

And there’s this. When I get anxious and overwrought, my blood pressure, normally under good control, shoots up. This is not a good thing. What settles me down? You guessed it. So, as a year-round bromide, each Christmas season I record a couple of favorites from the Hallmark holiday oeuvre to rely on when I need to CALM DOWN. Last night, reeling from the steady stream of bad news that I could do absolutely nothing about, I curled up in bed at 11, went to my queue, and there found Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, a 2012 film I’d only discovered last year. It features Hallmark favorite Autumn Reeser as a vintage-clad parade maven, with a comedic, “old movie” quirkiness, a decent score, and a script that actually makes a little sense (even with trees in full leaf in Chicago in what is alleged to be the last week of November). There’s even an eating-in-[separate, of course] bed scene a la Debra Winger and Robert Redford in Legal Eagles. (In advertising, we used to call that “creative reuse.”) Short and sweet, tt was just what the doctor ordered—I slept like a baby.

So, I was thinking… given that we are in the midst of such a scary mess, and that we’re all holed up in our houses spending way too much time watching bad news and maybe getting on each other’s nerves, not to mention the strain of keeping little ones corralled inside… maybe it’s time for another round of those tried-and-true Hallmark Christmas movies. It couldn’t hurt.