A Winter Wonderland where the Cold Never Ran So Hot
How To Love With a Corn Cob Pipe and a Button Nose
Deck Them is a weekly newsletter exploring the Hallmark Channel’s 15th annual Countdown to Christmas. Share the joy ⭐
We get into the nuts and bolts of loving someone with a corn cob pipe and a button nose, and contemplate week four of Countdown to Christmas. Deck Them has drawn up all our findings, and we warn you they are candid!
AN ORAL HISTORY OF NON-HUMAN LOVE
Brought to you by California Romanza
We’ve always loved monsters.
Ancient Greeks told stories of gods transforming into beasts to snare their lusty desires. Their children—half-gods, full monsters—trapped and devoured maidens and men alike. A swan begets Helen of Troy. The minotaur returns to the center, again.
Except in this retelling, the labyrinth is a different sort of trap—a love story.
(Cue Edward Cullen, “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…”)
The promise of Western fairytales is transformation or obliteration. There’s the princess and all those frogs to be kissed; the beast who finds beauty and becomes a prince; the big bad wolf ready and waiting to gobble you up. Whether to absolve and heal, or consume completely, and become. My, what big teeth you have!
We grew to love the fang, not fear it.
Between legend and reality, there is Gothic Romance. Shaped by Romanticism and the mysterious, melancholic Bryonic hero, what once seemed threatening is not feared out and out, but flirted with and enjoyed. Dracula, after all, is seductive, and a love story against all odds. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, violence hides a tender underside, ripe for romantic possibilities. Perhaps even monsters need love.
Somewhere along the line—after all that vampiric thirsting— the publishing industry exploded in a surge of paranormal romance culminating in Twilight, the series that spawned a thousand fan-fictions. It dwindled for a moment, but it’s taken a new shape. Today, Sarah J. Maas—whose Romantasies don’t involve conventional monsters but human-like creatures with the powers of gods—reigns supreme. We’re back to the Greeks.
But then, maybe we never left. Outside the traditional publishing model, we find ourselves in the dark pathways of the independent and self-published, whose twists and turns can take us to the heart of what we’ve long been searching for.
Pull up your Kindle Unlimited subscription or peruse the cursed channels of Booktok, and you’ll find it—romance with aliens, Bigfoot, and every other kind of cryptid, neanderthal, and mythic beast with hooves, horns, or tentacles. These stories do not end with the creature (nearly always male) breaking a curse and reverting to his human form.
No, he remains what he’s always been: a monster. Only now he is the one you love.
It’s hard to overstate how popular these books have become (especially the one with the actual Minotaur). Often absurdly filthy, but usually fun—we simply can’t get enough of monsters, horns and all. While they can be read as a million different metaphors, in the end, it’s just romance. To take us away from the everyday, make it fantastic, make it glow.
Now is it so hard to imagine a woman loving a man once made of snow?
YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN FROSTY GETS HOT
Holiday rom-com phenom Russel Hainline wrote Hot Frosty because he thought the idea “What if, when Frosty the Snowman came to life, he turned into a super hot dude?” was funny. It is.
Starring Lacey Chabert, Dustin Milligan, Craig Robinson, and Joe Lo Truglio, Netflix’s latest holiday offering is an argument against the chasteness of Hallmark and a reminder that Chabert is the Queen of Christmas. She can sell anything.
Jack (Milligan) is a snowman brought to life when Kathy (Chabert), a young widow and small-town diner owner, places a magic scarf around his neck. He wins over the townspeople of Hope Springs with his six-pack abs and puppy dog charm, while slowly winning Kathy’s heart. Occasionally he wears a shirt.
No one else can stare into the middle distance and transport the viewer to airplane-level sensitivity as Chabert can. She does so with the help of a plucky supporting cast who each understand the assignment: Edward Scissorhands meets It’s a Wonderful Life.
We appreciate a movie that can embrace its premise and run with it.
We cried twice, laughed more.
HALLMARK ACKNOWLEDGES THE EXISTENCE OF HALLMARK
The modern Hallmark era, say post-Candace Cameron Bure, has seen a lessening of the hard and fast rules that defined Countdowns to Christmas of the past, an increase in comedic elements (what we’ve called “Holiday Hijinks”), and romantic leads that reflect our Holiday Giant’s intentions to court younger, likely millennial viewers.
Tammin Sursok and Brant Daugherty, the leads of Trivia at St. Nick’s—our favorite premiere of the Countdown so far—do everything right. They are brilliant. And compared to them, the others are lousy. While its sense of time tends towards always winter, never Christmas, Trivia is Holiday Hijinks well done, and with a surprise: Hallmark movies exist.
The appeal of Santa Tell Me is in the reunion of When Calls the Heart leads Erin Krakow and Daniel Lissing and the promise of not one but four Hallmark Hunks for the price of admission. By that measure, Tell Me is just fine.
The first Destination: Christmas1 movie of Countdown 2024, ‘Tis the Season to Be Irish, transports us to an Irish countryside where color correction casts everything in day for night. The story of a nomadic house-flipper (Fiona Gubelmann) and the multi-hyphenate Irishman (Eoin Macken) she reluctantly falls for, Be Irish is Leap Year, but Christmas—complete with a not-so-subtle shoutout to Dingle, and similar I wanna make plans wit’ca speech to end. No matter where you go, there you love.
The world is large and full of Christmas.
Countdown to Christmas continues with Christmas with the Singhs on Friday, Jingle Bell Run on Saturday, and Confessions of a Christmas Letter on Sunday. All times 8/7c.
Destination: Christmas is a specific category of Hallmark Christmas movies that take place on location in a non-United States or Canadian setting. Usually, that means Europe. In these movies, the culture shock, custom-learning, and wacky locals take our main character on a journey to discover that the magic of Christmas really is everywhere.
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