Lifetime Christmas movies are my certainty anchors

When life’s plotlines get unruly, they offer tidiness, comfort and joy

Your Five-Year Plan is a newsletter about embracing life’s profound uncertainty.

Maybe your own plans went up in flames; maybe you’re considering a big, scary leap. This is your trusty companion while you’re writing the next life chapter.

Welcome to the conversation—and to the adventure that unfolds when your plans go sideways. This is letter #33. ✨

Lifetime Christmas movies are my certainty anchors

Downtown Chicago at Christmastime, captured on Kodak Portra 800 film

Five years ago, I pressed “play” on a daunting undertaking: watching every new-release Lifetime Christmas movie of 2018.

I hear you scoffing, but this movie marathon was a true test of endurance, beginning on November 21st with a five-premiere week, and wrapping one month later with the twenty-third feature-length film.

Forget holiday parties and adult responsibilities; this was my sole focus that winter. And it offered an unintended side benefit: the opportunity to gather statistically-significant data about the Lifetime Christmas movie franchise.

Any given year, I found, approximately 13% of the offerings will be genuinely good movies. Another 30% will elicit a nod of respect (“Hey, they really tried their best there!”). 35% are inoffensive but forgettable—perfect for playing in the background while you’re tidying the house.

The final 22%, though? Unwatchable.

What is a Lifetime Christmas movie?

If you answered “Uh…a movie set at Christmastime that runs on the Lifetime channel,” we’ve got some nuance to address before going any further.

First, it’s crucial to note that every Lifetime Christmas movie protagonist is either:

• A small-town business owner running a failing mom-and-pop (Christmas being the last chance to save it!), or

• A hard-charging, big-city marketing or real estate executive who’s been alone and/or in the big city for so long that they’ve forgotten the true meaning of Christmas.

More statistics: there is a 75% chance that the protagonist’s mother is dead, and if a small business is involved, the odds are similar that it’s an inn, a bakery, a bookstore, or a Christmas tree farm.

If the protagonist is a hard-charging, big-city executive, they’re usually (begrudgingly) forced to visit a small town at Christmastime, where they have a run-in with either an old love or the owner of a failing small business (Christmas, of course, being the last chance to save it)—with bonus points if their old love and the business owner are one and the same person. As you might guess, their cold heart gets defrosted before the credits roll.

Usually, the exact small-town setting isn’t mentioned; Lifetime wants you to feel that the plot could have unfolded in your own backyard, whether you’re an American living in New Hampshire, Alabama, Oregon, or Arizona.

If the setting is mentioned—say, somewhere in the Great Plains—it’s usually incongruous with the fact that the Canadian Rockies are visible in every outdoor shot (all Lifetime Christmas movies appear to be filmed just outside Vancouver).

Lifetime Christmas movies aren’t just Christmas movies; there’s usually at least one token Hanukkah movie, too.

And spiritually, Lifetime Christmas movies go beyond the Lifetime network. Films of this ilk also run on Hallmark—the true pioneer in this field, though I tend to find their romance plotlines chaste and insipid. (To each their own!)

Streaming giants Hulu and Netflix have realized that Lifetime Christmas movies are big business, and launched their own franchises with your favorite B-list stars: Vanessa Hudgens, Emma Roberts, Lindsay Lohan. Unfortunately, though, the quality of the offering tends to be inversely correlated to its casting budget.

Sometimes, I’ll be watching a show within earshot of my boyfriend—for example, the Netflix series Virgin River, starring Alexandra Breckenridge (whose 2018 Lifetime Christmas movie Christmas Around the Corner was one of the few good ones).

He’ll ask for a synopsis, and once I explain the plot—“It’s about a jaded big-city nurse who moves to a rural town and falls in love with a small business owner!”—he nods knowingly. “Oh, so it’s a Lifetime Christmas movie,” he asserts correctly, despite there being nothing Christmassy about it.

Difficult choices at Christkindlmarkt, captured on Kodak Portra 800 film

In his book Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance, Jonathan Fields defines a certainty anchor as “a practice or process that adds something known and reliable to your life when you may otherwise feel you’re spinning off in a million different directions.”

Anchors, of course, keep us moored when unpredictable forces—the wind, the currents—seek to bat us about.

It’s the consistency of certainty anchors, Fields argues, that gives us a toehold when the future feels as fuzzy as a pair of fleece-lined slippers. They’re the weighted blanket that keeps us from spinning out for just long enough to remember that, in the immortal words of Semisonic, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Certainty anchors come in many forms—ritual and routine being two important ones.

Others, like Lifetime Christmas movies, are the certainty-anchor equivalents of comfort food: the mac and cheese my mom made by melting a tablespoon of butter with blocks of sharp cheddar and a splash of milk, or the chicken soup my dad made every Saturday night with roast chicken left over from Friday’s dinner.

A certainty anchor is a salve, not a numbing agent.

Watching twenty-three Lifetime Christmas movies in one month gave me way too many opinions about the franchise, but it didn’t affect my ability to engage productively with the rest of my life.

Drinking twenty-three bottles of wine over the course of December, or spending the equivalent number of hours on Instagram—alcohol and social media both being controlled substances best categorized as “depressants”—would’ve had a different effect.

Lifetime Christmas movies were my balm for the rather banal holiday stresses of 2018, and the harsher winters that followed.

I watched them over Teleparty alongside my cousins in December 2020, when we were all isolated from each other during the pandemic. I watched them again with my mom and her home health aide in December of 2022, right before we all found out her cancer treatments weren’t working.

Pigeons huddling for warmth, captured on Kodak Portra 800 film

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, every holiday season is challenging in its own way.

If you’re alone, there’s usually an ache involved, and if you’re ensconced in family dynamics—well, that comes with its own pains.

Lifetime Christmas movie marathons always make the holiday season better, whether you’re alone or surrounded, whether you watch each film with doe-eyed sincerity or (my preference) specifically to make fun of. And if you stumble upon this letter asynchronously, remember that they work equally well as certainty anchors in July.

But even if you despise the franchise, do find your own certainty anchor to help you through the tumult of December—and the inevitable tumult of, you know, whatever comes next.

It can’t be wrapped, but finding a go-to certainty anchor is, unquestionably, a gift to yourself.

💬 What do you think?

I’m curious to hear from you. What’s your favorite certainty anchor? (Bonus points if it happens to be a specific Lifetime Christmas movie.)

Had your own plan-in-flames experience? Taking a leap into the unknown? I’d love to hear more. Just hit “reply” to get in touch, or introduce yourself here.

Warmly,
Maddie