Right This Very Minute
Our guide to five-star vibes in Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas
Deck Them is a seasonal newsletter exploiting the Hallmark Channel’s annual Countdown to Christmas ⭐ We won’t fa-la-la-la-la, we’re Msrs. November ⭐
On Friday, November 14th, Los Angeles’ KOST 103.5 FM flipped the switch from feel-good adult contemporary to continuous Christmas music, marking the official™ start of the holiday season in Southern California. We say to you, there is no greater tiding of good cheer than cresting the hills while the sun is shining with the top pulled down and Darlene Love on the radio, baby.
For those just tuning in, Thanksgiving weekend is likely a first taste of the holidays. That is, of course, if you haven’t spent the past six weeks watching the Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas. Don’t sweat it. Once your uncle’s team has lost and your nieces and nephews finish bingeing Stranger Things, wow your extended family by recommending only the best Our Holiday Giant has to offer. All we watch is crème de la crème.
What would you say if we told you the best movie of the season came out before Halloween? You’d have to believe us. Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper!is like a Target shopping spree after you’ve hit up the onsite Starbies. You’ve got an iced sugar cookie latte in hand, and the entire John Derian collection is in stock. That’s Ted Cooper. While its eight acts can feel stretched, Robert Buckley comes in fresh as the titular weatherman, overtly optimistic despite a string of Yuletide bad luck, and Kimberley Sustad makes us believe she could truly fall in love while spending the night locked in a North Pole-themed escape room by a hungover elf. Sustad is peerless!
Long-time listeners know Our Holiday Giant releases a set of specifically-themed movies every year: a military salute around Veteran’s Day, the ubiquitous royal this or that, Destination: Hallmark, a time-travel vehicle for period-piece decorations, and a variation on the Scrooge story.
This season, Our Holiday Giant blessed us with a real Kate & Leopold situation in A Newport Christmas, where our protagonist, Ella, a charitable and spirited socialite in 1905, played by Ginna Claire Mason, hitches a ride on the tails of a Christmas comet to 2025, where she meets Wes Brown’s history buff, Nick, who works at a museum that was once her home. In some head-spinning twists of science and fate, Newport sets its sails to ports unknown (beyond the green screens of the Uncanny Valley). Lest we forget, Wes Brown was in an episode of Twin Peaks! He is, indeed, like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream.
In Christmas Above the Clouds, Scrooge is back, and she’s girl-bossing a little too close to the sun—literally, in an airplane! In the air! The spirits (they can do anything) are flight attendants, and Marley is in the pre-flight safety presentation. Meanwhile, her love interest, a gender-swapped Mary Bailey, tackles the male loneliness crisis.
Clouds sees the fabled reunion of essential Hallmark royalty Tyler Hynes and Erin Krakow. Here, ex-fiancés rekindle on a red eye to Australia (albeit with Christmas ghosts). She’s Ella Nezzer, after all, and needs to learn a lesson. But her pining and longing for a second-chance romance is cut short—Krakow must mug and mope for the camera. When sentiment is placed sincere, it works. We do want a little magic in our merry. We need the chance to make amends long after the opportunity has gone. Some otherworldly help to wake us, shake us, and turn us ‘round in the right direction. That’s the spirit, isn’t it? That God bless us, everyone?
As for Scrooge, the abstraction, the trades are reporting that both Robert Eggers and Ti West are developing adaptations of the classic ghost story. Ti West has officially cast Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge, while Eggers is eyeing Willem Dafoe for the cold-hearted miser who ends as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew. We must be on the naughty list.
Listen, we’re not watching Finding Mr. Christmas. We would do anything for the holidays, but we won’t do that. And we’re not watching Mistletoe Murders because we left true crime in the before times. We’re skipping everything royal, we know that Melt My Heart for Christmas is the worst Hallmark movie ever made, and we’ll only write about Three Wisest Men if you treat us better than Luke (Andrew Walker) treats the mother of his children (the titular baby and titular boy, and, now, a set of twins). Eventually, someday, we’ll get around to watching A Keller Christmas Vacation. But not today.
Today is a day, albeit what they say, about enjoying what is around you. It will not be perfect. It is not meant to be. There is complexity in its history, and horror, too. And here we are, each one of us, right in the middle of it. Today, we will be surrounded by feasts and messes of our own making, or not. Being human ensures that life will always be complicated, but beautiful. Make your plate, if you can.
Reach out to the ones you love. Leave them without doubt.
If You Received a DM from Tyler Hynes, No, You Didn’t
Grandma got ran over by a chatbot! Countdowners of a certain age are being targeted by scammers who have moved on from impersonating Nigerian royalty to impersonating Ryan Paevey. To address the ongoing epidemic of AI-generated Hallmark Hunks DMing fans and pleading for financial assistance, Our Holiday Giant has issued a series of PSAs advising its devotees that Tyler Hynes will never tell them he loves them or ask for money. Stay safe, Hynies.
Cocoa Corner
We’re bringing back our favorite feature from last season. To kick things off, we shared a festive brew we picked up from Handy Market in Burbank. Holiday Weekend, an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels with coconut, cacao nibs, cinnamon, and marshmallows, is made by Prairie Artisanal Ales, the kings of weird holiday beer, and “the world’s only perfect beer to crack open after you’ve eaten a turkey, the dishes are scrubbed and put away, and you’re settling into your recliner to watch the Detroit Lions get their asses kicked.”
Send us photos of your festive drinks (however and wherever you enjoy them!) (just tag @tidbits.la on Instagram), and we’ll feature them in the next edition.
Love this perspective! Your analysis of early holiday content deployment really resonates, buiding on previous insights into seasonal cultural algorithms. It's fascinating how these media strategies predict and shape consumer behavior, almost like a carefully optimised festive rollout. Truly insightful.