Coming On Christmas
It’s a Season to Be Jolly, but We’re Feeling Melancholy
Deck Them is a weekly newsletter exploring the Hallmark Channel’s 15th annual Countdown to Christmas ⭐ Share the joy ⭐
Christmas is a liminal space, a hectic montage set to Ode to Joy. It pauses to take on whatever shape is needed. It takes a strong, strong caring. It belongs to the meek, however broken. Last Sunday, Josh Allen became the first player in NFL history to throw for three touchdowns and rush for three more in the same game. The Bills lost by two. Remember no man is a failure who has friends.
Thank you to everyone who tuned into our Dublab set last weekend. We’ll let you know when the recording has been uploaded to the Puppetphonic archive. Meanwhile, for those indulging in the holiday season's duality, we recommend Nothing Silly’s Winter ‘24 mixes.
Private Princess Christmas nearly ruined Christmas. It fits into a recent trend from Hallmark of Disney Channel original movie-esque entries, in which the characters would make more sense if they were preteens in the early noughties fighting Hilary Duff and Christy Carlson Romano for screen time. The movies end up juvenile, but, like, not in a fun way. Private Princess is also one of three movies so far this Countdown to Christmas to make the “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” argument (albeit a decade late). We can’t wait for Sriracha Princess Christmas and Sriracha Princess Christmas: Bacon Craze, thereafter.
Earlier this Countdown, Hallmark acknowledged the existence of Hallmark movies in Trivia at St. Nick’s,1 and last Saturday, Our Holiday Giant acknowledged the existence of holiday movie rules in Sugarplummed. Hoping to bring her family closer, Emily (Maggie Lawson) wishes for a picture-perfect holiday like her favorite made-for-TV movies. To her shock, Sugarplum (Janel Parrish), steps off the screen to make Emily’s wish come true. Parrish proves she is a worthy successor to Lacey Chabert.
Since 2019, Hallmark has made at least one Hanukkah-focused movie per season. Leah’s Perfect Gift—the first of two this Countdown—a Hanukkah and Christmas crossover following Leah (Arlook), as she celebrates her first Christmas with her boyfriend, who looks suspiciously like Mike Newton from Twilight, and his family in Connecticut (who provide further confirmation that Connecticut is the worst place on earth). Arlook is unbelievably charming, bringing light freshness to a tired genre.
There’s a crack in everything, that’s how Christmas gets in.
It’s getting to be that part of the holiday season when merriment is banked and the slow drift of melancholy takes over. Christmas is a complicated and often painful time of year, but there can be a sort of pleasure in wrapping yourself in melancholy’s blanket, lighting the candle of nostalgia, and settling in for the night. If that’s the feeling, we offer you the following indulgences.
Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is triumphant, but not before despair. The story of George Bailey and Bedford Falls is a long road to the light only possible with angels (friends). Also starring Jimmy Stewart, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner is softer, wrapped in silver tinsel—a shining tinge to the streets of Budapest where each character suffers in their way amidst the bustle of holiday commerce. Lubitsch’s film ends with love: romantic, familial, and for the season itself.
Little Women (2019) is a Christmas movie. When Father March (Bob Odenkirk) returns home and says, “my little women”—that's Christmas. Conversely, when the Marsh sisters, those little women, go a-wassailing in the 1994 adaptation well, that’s winter. Both wear their melancholy like a favorite sweater.
Winter in the Rust Belt is stupid and vulgar. The lights of Christmas punctuate snow-blanketed industrial towns, their muddy rivers—all chestnut brown and polluted white—with red and green and gold. Someplace Norman Rockwell wears Carhartt and keeps his hat on at the bar. Feast of the Seven Fishes, starring Skyler Gisondo, reminds us the season of joy takes place in quiet moments in between.
A sacred and profane Christmas Eve in the City of Angels, Sean Baker’s Tangerine captures the sun-bleached streets of Los Angeles like they are, as they sound. The film’s climax fashions one iconic donut shop the O.K. Corral. Yes, Virginia, it’s a western for the holidays.
The poignant refrain, Christmas, Again, welcomes solitude, keeps company with cold. You see it in Kentucker Audley’s eyes and the sparse corners of his lonely tree lot—a want for peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
Sleepless in Seattle is a romantic comedy populated by profoundly lonely people. In this Valentine's Day movie that begins on Christmas Eve, Nora Ephron’s finest turn the isolation of winter and their longing hearts into something warm and bright.
On the cusp of the upper class, you’re cold and warm at once—one foot on the street, your back freezing, an ill-fitting coat offering little protection. Your face is hot, the other foot in a heated ballroom. On Christmas Eve, are you content or still seeking everything you don’t have and never will? The UHBs of Metropolitan will help you figure it out.
Chilly Scenes of Winter is a haunted memory of lovers held by tender dark and lit with lowly sun. Once it gives way to spring, gift yourself Joan Micklin Silver’s entire filmography.
The original Black Christmas (1974) is the blackest-ever black whereas Black Christmas (2006) beholds the garish, enticing beauty of multicolor Christmas lights. Somebody waits for you, and they come from inside.
Werckmeistre Harmonies is filled with foreboding and grace, far from the Hallmark town square. It’s not Santa, but a doomed circus coming to town. Béla Tarr’s blacks and whites cast the source text, László Krasznahorkai’s Melancholy of Resistance, in a thickening fog.
If none of these do it for you, there’s always Moonstruck.
Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but our readers are so delightful: this week we had puppet people sipping peppermint hot chocolate in Highland Park, holiday roadies in First Hill, a nice cup of tea in Eastern Washington, and Broguiere’s eggnog at home.
Send us photos of your festive drinks (however and wherever you enjoy them!) (just tag @tidbits.la), and we’ll feature them in the next newsletter.
The last full weekend of Countdown to Christmas premieres begins with Hanukkah on the Rocks on Friday, The Santa Class on Saturday, and Following Yonder Star on Sunday. All times 8/7c.
A favorite from this year’s Countdown. See our write-up here:
