ABSTRACT
In many of Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas” movies, the protagonists reliably recount the fond memories of their prior Yuletide seasons. Their recollections are frequently romanticized, shaded with the hue of the bittersweet, and dependably void of villainy. This idealization of prior Christmases is distinctly nostalgic and manifests as a cornerstone of the Hallmark Christmas movie. This chapter analyzes the employment of nostalgia in the storylines of Hallmark’s annual “Countdown to Christmas.” The chapter’s qualitative observations derive from an examination of a random sample of forty Hallmark Christmas movies, with original air dates ranging from 2009 to 2022. By highlighting the nostalgic tropes embedded in their respective plots, this analysis demonstrates that the Hallmark Christmas movie’s deployment of nostalgia envisions the “ideal” Christmas as not just a particular time of year, but also a particular place. The temporal and spatial conceptualizations of the idealized Christmas reveal specific insights pertaining to the social, economic, and political significance of nostalgia in the Hallmark cinematic universe.
