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Thanksgiving Eve I was home by myself and there was just nothing on television, so I flipped over to Lifetime Christmas movies. Linda Holmes has a pretty good system of rating these Hallmark holiday movies that I figured I could play bingo with:
*City girl
*Travels to idyllic small town
*Where there's snow
*To deal with a family situation
*Or a business that's in trouble
*Has to deal with a handsome but irksome guy
*Gets called back to the city
*Where she realizes the small snowy town really is where she belongs
BINGO!
I should try to make some side cash writing these screenplays.
You will be as surprised as I was to learn that the movies were not impossibly cheesy and I did not hate them. But I mean, everyone looks prettier bundled up for the cold, even if the snow blowing into their hair is fake. Don't believe me? Go look at Cameron Diaz in The Holiday.
Thursday morning I got up and watched the parade. I always do that. I like the parade. I like Thanksgiving. It's tied with Mardi Gras as my favorite holiday of the year. I'm not much for the lipsyncing pop stars, if they even are pop stars? I have no idea. I didn't recognize any of them and they all sound exactly the same to me. But I love the Broadway performances and the bands and the huge all-American cheerleader group and the Rockettes.
And that's when I saw it: The Macy's necklace ad.
It was like a kick in the chest. I was all, "Ooof, what just happened?" and I realized this is what if feels like when you're about to CRY. And look, I'm not a crier. I am not sentimental. I am 100 percent more likely to cry because I'm angry than because something touches me.
"Well that was weird," I thought, crisis averted.
And then the snowglobe ad. Dear gods, the snowglobe ad.
WHAT IS HAPPENING AND MAKE IT STOP.
Back in the parade, Pentatonix sang Where Are You Christmas? and Savannah and Hoda encouraged us to go get their new Christmas album, so I thought I might add that to my on-going, never-ending, semi-famous Christmas playlist (which you can enjoy here).
Because I haven't so much as put up a tree in at least 10 years, but I do like listening to Christmas music. It is the one and only thing I do that would even hint that I know it's December.
You can see what's happening here, right?
There's no snow or an inn/school arts program/poinsettia farm that I need to save, and I'm already married to the irksome handsome man, but it's like I am starring in my own Lifetime holiday movie wherein the jaded old lady rediscovers the spirit of Christmas.
I was so overwhelmed by it all that I ordered both indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations for the house! Not like, a ton of stuff. But a lighted wreath and small trees to go by the door, some garland and stockings for the mantle. My family is totally going to be all, "Who are you and what have you done with our mom?"
