A HALLMARK MOVIE REALITY CHECK

I sit here two weeks out from Christmas, and that means two things: holiday cheer is officially in season, and my parents are, unfortunately, knee-deep in Hallmark Christmas movies.

Where are these magical little towns where the local bakery is always somehow profitable and not a single snaggle tooth or meth mouth in sight?

These movies are filled with people who look like the type that only come alive at weddings when "Livin' on a Prayer" or "Pour Some Sugar on Me" blasts through the speakers.

Hallmark Christmas movies are basically the cinematic version of pharmaceutical commercials. You know, the commercials that show somebody with three months to live sipping wine on a blanket and watching hot air balloons on a blanket while hoping he will get whacked off as soon as his other pill kicks in.

In the pharmaceutical and Hallmark world, nobody has a real job, but somehow they all have a new, shiny car, and problems dissolve faster than Donald Trump’s approval rating.

In Hallmark World:

• Everyone has teeth whiter than Peter Centera.

• There are no Dollar Generals, no Circle K’s, and definitely no vape shops with ugly neon LED strips outlining every window. You never see giant glowing signs advertising Delta-8 or Kratom.

• Every town has three bakeries, and somehow all three are thriving.

• You definitely won’t see a 12-foot Halloween skeleton still standing in someone’s yard.

• And no MAGA Trump flags. I’m actually extremely jealous of this.

Show me a real Christmas cinema, and don’t say A Christmas Story because that movie sucks a reindeer’s ass:

• A middle-class cul-de-sac where every parent cares more about travel league softball than the actual child, who is actually tired of playing 15 games every weekend.

• A holiday romance that unfolds in a trailer park between an overweight white girl and a BBC as tax season is looming.

Instead, every year I’m forced to watch Winnie from The Wonder Years live her best life on what appears to be a librarian’s salary, while simultaneously trying to save her family farm that’s always minutes away from foreclosure. Then her high school crush returns as a best-selling author, billionaire, or CEO, and together they share a magical kiss at the town’s holiday parade, and her problems disappear until the next movie.

Hallmark is basically America’s most successful Christmas propaganda machine.