Like most 30-somethings, my holidays have always been filled with overwhelming trauma and emotional pain. Ask me to pick up a pumpkin pie, and my palms start sweating. Ask me to decorate a Christmas tree, and I start gutturally screaming. 

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that I’ve come to love shitty Lifetime Christmas movies, which really fill a gaping void in a way that only a Candace Cameron-Bure-starring masterpiece can. 

A sea of utter rated-PG blandness, these horrifically, hilariously formulaic nonsense bushels imagine a world free from actual strife and pain. War? No. Famine? Definitely not. Trump-style dictators screaming about hamberders while boasting about sexually assaulting women on Twitter? Not in the Lifetimeverse! Heads butt, but no actual conflict happens. Characters get sad, but depression doesn’t happen. Children exist, but sex doesn’t happen. In the Lifetimeverse, the world is a soft, safe, sterile respite from the ongoing trauma of our daily lives. 

Their formulaic nature, while absurd and asinine, is really at the heart of their charm. They’re the kind of movies you can put on in the background while you’re screaming at the Christmas tree, and when you snap back to reality 30 minutes later, you immediately know what’s going on. 

Time and space don’t really factor into these movies, but that’s okay, because they always bear the same messages: true love exists at Christmas time, your family will always happily come back together in the end, and your friends are the kind of friends that will always love you and never judge you, no matter how stupid and white you are. 

Also, that guy with the big beard is definitely Santa. Trust me.

Now, while every movie is almost exactly the same at their core, there’s enough swapping of formulaic elements to keep you at least vaguely on your toes. Let’s take a look:

Formula 1: Santa Clause is Coming to Town

In at least 50% of Lifetime movies, Santa is very real, and very present. There are a few sub-formulas for this one:

1. The other characters don’t know the Santa character is Santa, despite him wearing only red and black, sporting a giant white beard, regularly giving bowl-full-of-jelly laughs, and always being named Kris and/or having the last name Kringle

2. Some of the characters know the Santa character is Santa, while the rest, inexplicably, remain blissfully unaware, despite him wearing only red and black, sporting a giant white beard, regularly giving bowl-full-of-jelly laughs, and always being named Kris and/or having the last name Kringle, or

3. The characters know full-well the Santa character is Santa, and he’s well-known as someone’s jolly neighbor or, inexplicably, the father of the main love interest

In the end, either Santa welcomes his new son-in-law or daughter-in-law to the family, or gives a knowing wink as the love interests kiss in the middle of a snowstorm before disappearing in a fog of snowflakes and jingle bells. 

Formula 2: Big City Lady Meets Hardworking Blue-Collar Hometown Hero

A sophisticated Big City Lady without a discernible job who always wears heels (even in the middle of a snowstorm) finds herself in a quaint Christmas town, which is always: 

1. Her hometown

2. Some schtick-y place she has to write a story about/attend a key business meeting in/follow her overbearing boss to, or

3. A random mystery place she gets stuck in during said snowstorm

Big City Lady has an awkward meet-cute with a Hardworking Blue-Collar Hometown Hero who is aways:

1. Her high school or college boyfriend

2. The beloved son of the beloved diner owner/town plumber/kindly doctor/Santa, or

3. A widowed father looking for another chance at love

The Big City Lady and the Hardworking Blue-Collar Hometown Hero either love each other immediately, or loathe each other until the third act, but in the end, always find true love together and kiss during a snowstorm. 

Formula 3: Sad Rich Man Finds Hope with Quirky Christmas-Loving Lady

A rich but sad man with unexplored depth is always:

1. The heir to a big town family that doesn’t want to sell the family house/museum/historic monument but is being forced to sell the family house/museum/historic monument because a cold-hearted developer or investor he didn’t realize was that cold-hearted is making him

2. A developer that wants to come knock down charming Christmas cottages to build a sleek new condo/apartment block/mall to modernize the town, or

3. An overworked businessman whose iPhone is glued to his ear that hasn’t taken a vacation since he was an infant, much to the chagrin of his kindly parents/overly precocious child/exasperated personal assistant

Sad Rich Man has an awkward meet-cute with a Quirky Christmas-Loving Lady who is always:

1. His new starry-eyed personal assistant or business partner

2. The beloved daughter of the beloved diner owner/town plumber/kindly doctor/Santa, or

3. The overly jolly owner of the town inn/local Christmas paraphernalia store/Christmas tree farm, or at least the front desk attendant/floor staff/tree-retriever of such locales

The Sad Rich Man shuns the holiday cheer of the Quirky Christmas-Loving Lady and shuts her out of his heart before they eventually overcome their differences, fall deeply in love, and kiss during a snowstorm. 

And that’s it. That’s literally fucking it. Sure, each movie picks and chooses which tropes it wants to use, and sometimes there are characters playing elves (seriously), but in the end, you can always tell exactly what the fuck is going to happen. 

When it comes to naming conventions, we follow an even more bullshit algorithm. If the writers and directors dialed it in to create these formulas, they basically shrugged and let the office dog come up with the names. A sample of this season’s fare?

• A Sweet Christmas Romance

• Random Acts of Christmas

• Twinkle All the Way

• Staging Christmas

• The Magical Christmas Shoes (okay, this one I need to see)

I truly believe they ordered a box of Christmas lingo magnets, slapped them on the office fridge, let the dog nose them together, and just went with whatever string of nonsense they ended up with. “Christmas Unleashed?” You fucking betcha, Fido! 

And don’t even get me started on who stars in these piles of nonsense. In addition to Christmas Movie Queen Candace Cameron-Bure, we also have Melissa Joan Hart (stay tuned for my next post!), Kelly Rowland (yes, that Kelly Rowland), Tia Mowry-Hardrict (yes, that Tia Mowry), and a handful of other “haven’t I seen them somewhere?” nobodies that slither their way out of the depths just in time for Christmas. 

Given the acclaimed stars, there’s enough low-simmering Christianity to make my Jewish ass sweat, but even that is sterilized and watered down for common consumption. Which is, I suppose, a blessing—sure, the characters might wear crosses and go to church a lot and extol bland Bible learnings, but no one’s screaming about how marriage is between Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and there aren’t any scenes where the meet-cute happens at a Planned Parenthood protest (yet), so I guess I can keep watching on autopilot until that day comes. 

And watch on autopilot I will. Besides, I’m moving in a week, and I’ll need something to drown out the sounds of my screams as I decorate my tree—wouldn’t want to concern the new neighbors too much, after all.