On the (Hall)mark

Many women have favorite "present-wrapping movies."  The films you tee up when you settle in to wrap gifts or assemble Christmas cards.  Mine have been the same for years:  While You Were Sleeping, Bridget Jones's Diary, and Love, Actually.  Every once in a while, I will mix things up with a Christmas episode of The Office.

My mom and sisters are fans of the films above, but swear by the holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel.  My mom claims she could happily wrap presents and watch the movies all day long.

I'm open to expanding my holiday repertoire.

In an unwelcome interruption to my husband's viewing of the ND/Stanford game, I took advantage of family togetherness to have the experts recommend some Hallmark movies to get me started.

Recent Favorites (responses were fast and furious and often passionate).  I have included key words and phrases I was able to take down ...

Snow Bride -- tabloid reporter

Christmas Under Wraps -- Candace Cameron in Alaska, and the one where she is a doctor

Let It Snow -- Candace Cameron when she is the ad executive and Alan Thicke is her dad

The Royal Christmas

Merry Matrimony -- my niece loved it

Tis the Season for Love

The Christmas Ornament -- Kelly Martin

Sad, but Good
November Christmas -- my mom called it "heartbreaking," one sister called it "hard" and the other said, "it's sad but if you stick with it, it all ends up ok"

A Dog Named Christmas -- two phrases that came up in the discussion of this one were "saves the horse from the mountain lion" and "has flashbacks of the dog he had in Vietnam"

 Avoid
- the ones where someone is a witch
- the North Pole ones
- Cookie Cutter Christmas (uncomfortable, hard to watch)

My sisters summarized the ingredients for a Hallmark Christmas Movie:  return to a hometown or starting over in a big city, reunion with old flame, lead character really loves Christmas, tree lot scene, everything wrapped with big red bow at the end

My sister LAP claims that when there are ten minutes left, she always says, "There's a lot that needs to be wrapped up in ten minutes."  But it always gets wrapped up.

My mom added that kids can watch these movies.

All three stressed that we had just scratched the surface with the titles discussed above.

The movie they are most looking forward to is Mariah Carey's Christmas Melody, which will be premiering on December 19th and which was filmed in our hometown of Cincinnati.  My mom's friend Karen reports that instant potato flakes were used as snow and that Mariah Carey was friendly to the shopkeepers in Wyoming, the area of town where the filming took place. 

I'm ready to get on the (Hall)mark.  Do you have any must-see or must-avoid Hallmarkers for my list?