Every time a bell rings

Magnet #656 - O Christmas Tree

There's a part of me that can't quite get into the Christmas spirit - mainly cuz I feel like I missed Thanksgiving, and all of a sudden, bam, it's Christmas.

Some of it, is because I haven't been able to listen to my Christmas music. You know, the stuff where I have not one, but two, very old iPods and a cellphone loaded with 600 Christmas tunes. Alone. Plus, three new CDs this year that I haven't been able to listen to.

And, of course, I keep seeing Christmas trees everywhere I go. From Padua, Italy, to Seattle's Space Needle, tis the season.

One thing I haven't strayed from, is my love of Christmas movies. You know how some people (namely my sister and my dad) think it's not Christmas til you've watched It's a Wonderful Life or White Christmas, or Love, Actually? Or, it's not Christmas til you've watched any stop-action Rudolph, or sad Charlie Browns?

That's not me. I love Christmas made-for-television movies. The cheesier - the better. I love them. I get sucked in, and start to marathon them, like they're my popcorn movies. Whether it's ABC Family or LMN or Hallmark or Fa-la-la-la Lifetime - I am always down for cheesy Christmas movies. Last year, I filled up like 4 DVDs with them. Four.

One of my all-time favorites is Borrowed Hearts - so old, that you can totally see it in the print quality. It's the one with Roma Downey as a single mother, whose daughter wishes upon a dollhouse and Hector Elizondo, the angel grants her little wish to make their little family complete with Roma's boss, Eric McCormack. Every year. That's my It's a Wonderful Life.

Still, for all the old titles out there, for whatever reason - they just keep coming. For reals, yo. There's a good thirty of them out there that airs every year, but every year, there's the promise of a handful of new ones from Hallmark, Lifetime and ABC Fam. Love.

I've seen a couple, like Lifetime's 12 Men of Christmas, a Cheno movie, which was ok, I suppose. Really, it should have appealed, because it was literally my story of the NY chick who has to go to Montana to make it, and she does, and meets handsome, wealthy Mr. December, and lives happily ever after. In Kalispell, Montana.

But, I did see one this week, Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle on Hallmark, starring James "Dawson Leery" Van der Beek playing the emotional shut-down single father to twins, who ends up with that chick who played in Being Erica - through the power of Mrs. Merkle, played by Doris Roberts. Unabashedly good, I thought.

Oh, I could keep going with the amount of cheesy holiday movies that they make just for me, but I won't. There are too many out there to love.

Just watch any of the women-focused cablenets and you'll quickly get sucked in. No, really!