47 movies, one hard year, and the stories that helped me survive
Last Christmas, I watched 47 made-for-TV Christmas movies.
That included every single Hallmark premiere and a few from other networks, just for good measure.
I watched them not because they were masterpieces. Not because I couldn't wait to see another small-town bakery save another big-city career woman. Not because I needed another predictable love story.
I watched them because I needed somewhere gentle to go.
Watching Christmas movies had already become a tradition for me. Every summer, I start scouring the internet for the upcoming season's lineup. Hallmark, Lifetime, Great American Family. As schedules are released, I make checklists by network, crossing off each premiere as I watch it. I log every movie and rate it when I'm finished.
It's a whole process, one I take embarrassingly seriously.
But 2024 was different.
It was a hard year.
It was the year I felt like I was mostly surviving. My life had unraveled in ways I never expected, and so much of the future felt uncertain. I was lonely in a way that's difficult to explain, carrying around the quiet weight of a life I hadn't planned.
So every night, after the rest of the house was asleep, I'd crawl into bed, pull the blanket over my shoulders, press play, and let the soft glow of Christmas wash over me. On weekends, I could sometimes watch as many as five.
It wasn't really about the movies.
It was about needing something predictable. A world where lonely people weren't lonely forever, families found their way back to one another, everyone eventually found where they belonged, and even the biggest messes could be wrapped up before the credits rolled.
Predictability isn't always something we celebrate.
But that winter, it felt like mercy.
Looking back, I don't think Hallmark movies fixed me.
But for one winter, they held me together.
They gave me two hours at a time where I didn't have to carry my own story. I could borrow someone else's happy ending for a little while, until it felt a little easier to return to my own.
My circumstances didn't change when the credits rolled. The uncertainty was still there. The grief was still there. My real life was waiting for me every time I turned off the TV.
But night after night, those stories reminded me what warmth felt like. What hope looked like. What it felt like to believe that everything might be okay in the end.
Maybe that's why I kept borrowing happy endings.
Not because I expected life to work like a Hallmark movie.
Because they gave me hope that one day, I still might find my own.
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