Since I mentioned them in the previous section, I am going to address Hallmark movies now. When it comes to holiday viewing and the Hallmark Channel, I have found that there are two types of people. One type is those who follow the Countdown to Christmas on the website or Facebook page, and will willingly curl up on the sofa to watch every single one of those movies. The other type is those who will make fun of the first type and claim that every Hallmark movie plot is the same. (I’m not saying which type I am).
There is certainly a place for this type of entertainment. Hallmark movies are wholesome, heartwarming, and always full of holiday cheer. Anyone who watches one knows what they will be getting, and sometimes that kind of comforting pick me up is necessary around the holidays.
What some people don’t know is that an awful lot of the movies on that channel are actually based on novels. According to one list on Goodreads, there are at least 49 books that have been turned into Hallmark movies. It would be impossible to list all of them in this column, but that would give a big boost to your reading list! The genre has become so popular that Hallmark now has its own publishing house to support authors (go to the Hallmark Channel website, then click on “Books” from the drop down menu).
There are several other holiday favorites that could be included here: Meet Me in St. Louis (famous for Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) is based on a book of the same name by Sally Benson; It’s A Wonderful Life is based on a short story and booklet written by Philip Van Doren Stern, and (perhaps most famously) A Visit from St. Nicholas written by Clement Clarke Moore to name a few. But I wanted to save space to discuss a few other things.
At this point, I would like to note that this was supposed to be an inclusive holiday column, and not just about Christmas-centric movies. However, upon research, I found no Chanukah movies that were based on books. In fact, the only Chanukah movies I found at all were Eight Crazy Nights, which is based on Adam Sandler’s The Chanukah Song from his SNL days, and a strange looking Australian movie called The Hebrew Hammer.
looking Australian movie called The Hebrew Hammer.
This is a real shame, as there is no shortage of children’s books that could be made into holiday specials to be shown along some of the “classics.” There is The Flying Latke by Arthur Yorinks, in which a family food fight results in a latke being mistaken for a flying saucer, or Shmelf the Hanukkah Elf, the story about an elf in Santa’s List Checking department who learns about why some kids are not on Santa’s lists (this one provides a really great teaching opportunity, especially for younger kids).
Another children’s book that stood out was Dear Santa, Love, Rachel Rosenstein by Amanda Peet and Andrea Troyer. Rachel is Jewish, but yearns to have Santa visit her house, to the point of decorating and writing him a letter. As the story progresses, she begins to learn more about her religious identity, and comes to a better understanding of where she fits in during the holiday season.
This last one actually reminded me a lot of the episode of Friends where Ross tries to teach his son, Ben, about Chanukah, but Ben is all about Christmas. It takes the help of Santa, Superman and the Holiday Armadillo to get Ben to learn about how important Chanukah is to his family. (Honestly, if you’ve seen the show, the previous sentence totally makes sense!)
According to another Goodreads list, there are at least 42 romance novels centered around Chanukah. I couldn’t find any of them listed on the Hallmark movie list. It seems as if this is a market that could be greatly expanded.
In addition, there are at least 11 different multicultural events celebrated in December, and a quick search proves that there are books written about all of them. Wouldn’t it be great if Hollywood actually got it together and started producing entertainment that included many different celebrations so we could all learn about and come to better understanding of each other?