Frolicking Curmudgeon

Uh oh. Does everyone know what season it is? It’s here. The much anticipated Christmas Hallmark Channel season or what I refer to as the season of TV love triangles, tears, snowball fights, and hot chocolate. And much like the artificial world of afternoon soaps, Hallmark’s snow globe reality sets an expectation for holiday frolicking to which an employed guy – without access to a personal helicopter, yacht, hotel chain, or royal lineage – might have a problem measuring up.

Oddly, I’ve never seen so many young widows and widowers. I guess it makes sense. Hallmark can’t have a bunch of exes crashing “Evergreen’s” Holiday Festival. Nothing worse than having an ex creeping up on you and your new holiday love interest at the Christmas tree lot while you’re giggling and making snow angels.

Time stands still at our house during Hallmark season. Schedules are changed. Watches synchronized. Alarms set. And Swiss Miss packets and Kleenex staged for the impending emotional marathon.

I walked into the house on Saturday after a bone-chilling eight hours of final pre-snowfall lawn cleanup. The house was dark except for the blue flicker of the kitchen TV and the tiny lights of Bekki’s Department 56 Snow Village. She was sitting statuesque, mesmerized by Hallmark’s latest offering, with a steaming cup on the counter in front of her.

“Thank GOD!” I said, “Is that coffee? I can’t feel my hands.”

“Hot chocolate.” She said, as the Hallmark logo flashed on the screen.

“Of course,” I said, wriggling my frozen arms free of my jacket.

“Vince, why don’t we ever have snowball fights or make snow angels?” Bekki asked.

“Uhhhh… there’s no snow. If you could tear yourself away, we could go outside at the commercial and throw sticks and leaves at each other. Scratch that. MY FROZEN SELF PICKED THEM ALL UP TODAY… ALONE!,” I replied.

“No, really,” she said, taking just enough energy to turn her head slowly in my direction. “Why don’t we have snowball fights?”

“Facebook… and the police department,” I said, “Can you imagine if you were walking your dog in the yard and I pegged you with a fluffy snowball. It’d be the end of days. There’d be Facebook posts with a bunch of sad lookin’ selfies of you with messed up hair and a wet face with the caption, ‘Vince thought it would be funny to attack me with rock hard iceballs. I’m still dizzy and think I have hypothermia.’ Then there’d be the replies from all of your sympathetic girlfriends;”

“Ugh…😧”

“OH MY GOD! ARE YOU OK?? 😡❄️😡❄️”

“abuser”

“Guys don’t get it. They think they’re being funny and playful. They forget that we’re girls.”

“Thoughts and prayers 🙏”

I’ll admit, I’ve watched the Hallmark Christmas shows with Bek. She gets mad because I figure out the plots immediately and “ruin the story.” But the shows are like an auto-repeating eight track tape, following the same plot; single thirty to forty-somethings, a misunderstood love triangle, made worse by truly horrible communication (explaining why the heartsick main characters are alone on Christmas), a character named “Nick” or “Kris” that looks a lot like Santa, a mission that draws two damaged souls together, hot chocolate, snow angels, the requisite giggling snowball fight, several interrupted kisses, CGI snowflakes under a clear blue sky, Christmas tree decorating, and a wise understanding single friend that seems to have uncanny Dr. Phil-like insight into the human spirit.

It’s like a group of women got together over spiced cider and gingerbread cookies and developed the cozy Hallmark formula, cramming in all of their ideal love elements. The scene is burned in my mind. There’d be six or seven of them, dunking and munching. One would have a sheet of unlined typing paper (for notes) and a sparkly purple gel pen.

“Yeah, Yeah… That’s great! The town will be ‘Evergreen’ and the main character, the angry widower guy, will be stranded in a snowstorm, waiting at the airport for the storm to lift so his helicopter can take off.”

“And he should be a prince…with dark wavy hair… and eyes like a collie….”

“And an Armani suit…

“No… a quarter-zip grey sweater and hot jeans…because he’s sad and has no color in his life.

“YEAH! YEAH…… but cashmere…”

“…and the girl should be a doctor. A workaholic that doesn’t take time for herself…”

“…and is hiding from relationships because she had a bad experience….”

“And her parents died in a train accident on Christmas Eve…when she was five…”

“She should be GORGEOUS!”

“Not too pretty…. Just kinda cute…”

“No she has to be spectacular… The guy’s a prince. He’s not gonna fall for a frump!”

“And they will meet at the airport because she has a Jeep and the airport owner guy “Nick” has a pet reindeer named Rudy that’s sick and she’s the only one that can get to the airport to help…”

[This is what Hallmark has done to my mind.]

In reality, the holidays are usually somewhat different. Ours are a choreographed rat race of visits to and from in-laws and out-laws. While my family has a bunch of twenty, thirty, and forty-somethings – and my brother named “Chris” (who incidentally looks nothing like Santa) – I’ve yet to see love triangles, snowball fights, snow angels, or interrupted kisses. The closest we get to a Hallmark Christmas is the occasional ugly holiday sweater or tipsy relative in a reindeer antler headband handing out broken candy canes while standing sentry under mistletoe near the front door.

But I get it. Hallmark’s annual marathon of Christmas frolicking sets a cozy happy tone for the holidays and it’s only for a couple of months. I guess I can be a frolicking curmudgeon…once a year… for the rest of my life…and be a stationary snowball target. But I’m drawing the line at snow angels. (I know where the dog poops.)