How To Know If You’re Trapped In a Hallmark Movie
Rachel O’Connor ‘26
Photo courtesy of Hallmark Movies & Mysteries website.
While you might think the biggest threat you face when you go home for the holidays is dealing with that one relative who never knows when to shut up, there's actually a darker possibility to be aware of this holiday season: being sucked into a Hallmark movie. It can be hard to tell the difference between a winter storm blowing in overnight and the start to your very own holiday romcom, so here’s some tips to help you out. Remember to stay vigilant and if your neighbors all start singing and dancing like some flashmob from hell, it's already too late.
You can’t seem to get away from five o’clock shadow guy.
Five o’clock shadow guy has perfect stubble that makes him look just the right amount of rugged, never unkempt. He wears flannels and drives an old pickup truck. He is never from the big city, always from a small town. For work, he does something with his hands that is also praiseworthy. In his spare time he contributes to the community by building birdhouses for homeless birds or helping old ladies put up their Christmas trees. He is always around, always offering a helping hand, and always reminding you with just his mere presence that your current boyfriend is a selfish scumbag who is too ambitious and doesn’t support your dreams.
Occasionally, you might encounter “decoy five o’clock shadow guy.” For the uninitiated, he might seem like five o’clock shadow guy for about five minutes because he’s handsome and nice on the surface. But cracks in his character quickly emerge. First, he’s almost always clean shaven. He (gasp) has a typical professional job, probably something in finance where he forecloses on little old ladies’ houses. There’ll be hints of selfishness, or worse, big city values. He’s here to be the foil. He might tie the girl to a railroad track, but he’s never gonna get her.
You are from the big city and have an inescapable longing for the simple life.
Whether you grew up in a small town and escaped to the city, or all you’ve ever known is city life, you are currently what can be described as a “girlboss.” You have a successful career that you insist fulfills you. You probably work in finance, entertainment, or advertising, because every single person the screenwriters know has one of those jobs. But deep down, all you really want is for a handsome lumberjack to show you the error of city living so you can abandon your financially stable career and have a family, because for some unexplained but universally accepted reason you can’t have both.
You are forced to spend the holiday season in a small town.
Whether you grew up there and are visiting family or your usually reliable car somehow breaks down as soon as you cross the town border, you are stuck there for Christmas. The town is always covered in snow and decorated so well it rivals Whoville. There are no chain stores or apartment complexes. Everybody lives in log cabins or cottages, mostly heated by wood-fired stoves. Nobody watches television unless it is to watch Frosty the Snowman or other Christmas classics. The place to be in town is Main Street, a street filled with quaint boutiques and other shops, none of which employ more than three people.
The townsfolk actually care who the mayor and the sheriff are, and treat them with respect instead of as the goobers they are. The “everyone knows everyone” mentality is exaggerated to the extreme. They all either remember every one of your embarrassing moments from high school or you feel as though you have “out-of-towner” stamped across your forehead. Not only does everyone know everybody, but they also all know five o’clock shadow guy and each has a personal heartwarming story about how he saved their beloved dog from drowning in a frozen river or single-handedly saved them from an avalanche. But somehow, none of them have actually tried to date him.
You are Helen-of-Troy gorgeous and yet somehow single.
If you aren’t dating a capitalist drone who can’t seem to put his phone on silent or spend more than five minutes with you before rushing off for a call with the CEO of his company, you are inexplicably single, despite looking like Bella Hadid and Timothée Chalamet’s test tube baby. Not only could you find a way to look good in a burlap sack, but you are funny, endearing, and always say the right thing. And not the slightest bit neurotic. The fact that you are unattached seems perfectly normal to everyone in this quaint town but is a baffling mystery to any viewer.
Your town keeps throwing corny festivals.
Your small town throws almost daily over-the-top Gilmore Girls-style Christmas festivals. The whole town always attends, including the children who are never sarcastic and always enthusiastic to participate. The festivals range from lighting trees that look like they have been cut down from an old-growth forest to elaborate snowman building contests where everyone suddenly becomes the Michelangelo of snowmen.
Your family business is failing.
When you return to your small town for the holidays you learn that, against all odds, your family’s 100-year-old mercantile business, which basically sells barrels of oats to the townsfolk, is somehow failing. Your parents are old and you either have no siblings or they are completely unsuitable to take over the family business. You are the only one that can take on that burden and save the family business from being bought by Amazon and turned into a parking lot at the expense of your career and the life you have built for yourself in the city.
All the town elders are wise.
All the elderly people in your town are known to be incredibly wise. Nobody rolls their eyes at them or mocks them. They are always listened to and treated with respect. Nobody derisively says, “okay, Grandpa” to them. The old folks are always willing to listen to your problems for hours at a time and reframe the dilemma that has been eating at you for the last hour into an easily solvable problem that is probably resolved by listening to your heart or embracing the spirit of Christmas. By the time that last commercial break is over, you’ll know exactly what to do. When the town’s oldies aren’t acting as your unpaid therapist, they are hanging Christmas ornaments, adding logs to the fireplace in their cozy cabins, or putting tea on the fire. They never do anything else. They are almost never sick or showing any signs of old age besides vaguely commenting on how the cold affects their “old bones.” The only time their age is ever an issue is when they are insisting that you participate in some holiday activity because their arthritis is acting up or they are simply too old to do it on their own anymore.
You react to any misunderstanding by planning to skip town and join a nunnery.
Inevitably, you will overhear a conversation out of context that makes you believe wholeheartedly that five o’clock shadow guy, who has spent the whole movie fixing your fences and shoveling your driveway, is in love with someone else. The someone else in question is either a catty mean girl or someone who is so sweet and genuine that you are convinced they are an angel sent from heaven who you can never compete with. Instead of using your critical thinking skills or, I don’t know, asking, five o’clock shadow guy, your reaction is to throw all your stuff in your car and head for the nearest nunnery. But don’t worry! Before you manage to leave town, five o’clock shadow guy will find you and clear up the misunderstanding before kissing you while it snows atmospherically behind you.
Infeasible Business.
There is a business in town that is so financially infeasible that you have no idea how it stays open. It might be your business or might be your friend’s business where you hang out. It has been open for hundreds of years and is the crown jewel of the town. The business sells Christmas decorations year round or gourmet candy canes, or strange hot chocolate flavors that literally nobody asked for. The business is thriving. It will outlive you. It will probably outlive your children. You’re pretty sure it's immortal. But in real life, its annual revenue would be about five bucks.
You have one friend in town.
Your singular friend is passably cute, but nowhere near your league. After all, there can’t be any mistake about who will end up with five o’clock shadow guy. She might wear a baseball cap, with no logo whatsoever, to make her look less feminine. She is more social than you, however, and will drag you to some town event where you will meet five o’clock shadow guy or see him again. She knows everything about everybody. When you ask her about five o’clock shadow guy, she somehow knows his entire life story down to the middle name of his sister-in-law’s cousin and his social security number. When the big misunderstanding happens, she will play some role in resolving it by either telling you that five o’clock shadow guy is obviously in love with you or by telling him where to find you. She is an expert in shovel talk.
The children in town are “old souls” and eerily wise for their age.
Five o’clock shadow guy might have a kid, in which case he is widowed and not divorced. His child is smart to the point that you have to look twice to make sure it’s not Yoda playing the role of a kid. His child is shockingly well-adjusted for someone who was raised by an interpreter for sled dogs and woodpeckers. The child will play an essential role in getting you and five o’clock shadow guy together. If five o’clock shadow guy does not have a child, any kid you do encounter is similarly wise.
There are no teenagers.
You have no idea where they went or if they have ever been there, but there are none now. Everyone is either 8-12, 25-35, or 60+.
The magic of Christmas (and five o’clock shadow guy) saves the day.
Somehow, when all seems lost, the magic of Christmas manages to save the day. This can be literal magic like Santa and his elves interceding on your behalf like the Virgin Mary herself. Or it can mean the town coming together like the Whos at the end of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas to stand around a tree holding hands and singing Christmas carols. Five o’clock shadow guy rallied them, something that makes any doubts you had about him and his unusual career path disappear instantly. Your family business is saved, though no one quite understands how.
The ridiculously improbable misunderstanding an hour-and-a-half into the movie now resolved, you end up with five o’clock shadow guy. Though he lives in an unheated shed and drives a 1972 pickup truck, it turns out that he’s worth $750 million, or is the kidney donor you need to live, or saves your grandmother who fell down a well, or in some other way solves all of the problems you have ever had in your life.
Exceptions.
On the rare occasion that you are the one from the small town, then an attractive but arrogant big-shot from the big city will show up to buy a beloved business and turn it into a parking lot or a factory for killing puppies. The beloved business is probably your family business and also financially infeasible. Your reaction is to bake him cookies because you believe this will somehow sway him to sabotage his business deal so your color-me-mine-style gingerbread business can stay afloat. Your plan works and he quits his job because he has fallen in love with you and the beauty of small towns. And you adopt all of the puppies.