By Emily Schilling

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is watching Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. 

Typically, these movies are “happily ever after” flicks that also provide viewers with the holiday of their dreams: small towns decked out to the nines, festively decorated homes, plates of cookies and mugs of hot cocoa, Christmas caroling, snowman building and buggy rides. The plots are far from complex. But I don’t watch the movies for the plots. I watch them because these movies are Hallmark greeting cards come to life. They make me feel good. 

I love Hallmark Christmas movies so much that I’ve been known to watch them throughout the year. My favorites tend to be about cookie baking competitions — which are a common theme in these holiday movies. 

Baking cookies is not my forte. My natural inclination is to bake cookies until they look done. Looking “done” to me means “soft brown.” And when you’re making chocolate chip cookies, “soft brown” does not translate to the soft, chewy texture that I prefer. Baking sheet after baking sheet of my cookies come out crispy and overbaked. They definitely aren’t Hallmark movie caliber!

Unfortunately, I fail at other Hallmark movie pastimes as well. For instance, I can’t carry a tune and, therefore, would opt out of a caroling outing, and I’ve never built a respectable snowman. 

But it never hurts to dream. So, in the dead of summer when I yearn for the cozy Christmas feeling, I whip up a mug of (instant) hot chocolate, turn on a Hallmark movie, and get lost in the happy holiday spirit … five months early. Sometimes you just need a little “merry.”

EMILY SCHILLING is editor of Indiana Connection