The One about the Day After Watching 50 Days of Christmas/Holiday Films and My Top 10 Holiday Telefilms

Watching consecutive days of Christmas/Holiday Films, that was an interesting marathon challenge for myself.

I think the last time I took part in a marathon challenge, was a 365 Project on Flicker a decade ago of taking a photo for 365 days straight. While this was 50 days of holiday films, I actually watched probably more than that, but only keeping to my plan of reviewing 50 films.

I began in November and ended a few days after the New Year.

Originally my plan was to finish by Christmas Day but I figured that I have been reviewing these holiday films consecutively day after day, why not stop at the 50th film review. Also, with today being the 12th day after Christmas Day and people celebrating “Epiphany” (Old Christmas). Or in the Christian sense, the day the Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem bringing gifts to infant Jesus. But I figured it would be fitting to write this final blog post to end my holiday season.

But I figured that I wanted to focus on digital releases of holiday telefilms (or at least those also available on Blu-ray or DVD) and a few that were release theatrically and are considered classics. The majority are primarily telefilms which were broadcasted on Lifetime Television and the Hallmark Channel.

The reason why that was the case, was that in November, Vudu had a sale on Christmas films for Lifetime (a $1 a movie). Without that sale, this marathon wouldn’t have been possible. They also had free Christmas films from the other channels that I reviewed as well. As for Hallmark, I noticed they released Hallmark Holiday sets (10 film sets, vol. 1 and 2). This one was $20 for 10 films, I decided to give that a try. What I didn’t expect was the films featured on those holiday sets to change from November to December. Primarily, older films from those sets were replaced by newer films.

While I have reviewed telefilms professionally years ago, I made the decision to do this marathon and thus I paid for the holiday films.

These holiday films no doubt put me in a holiday spirit but it also cheered me up during the tough times, when I was literally bedridden and in intense pain for over two weeks (I’ll post about this on my blog in the near future) due to a medical emergency.

These films helped get me through those tough times, because these films are primarily stories with happy endings, a lot of joy and a lot of hope, It brought a sense of calm and I was surely entertained.

I know many people debate on Lifetime vs. Hallmark, and which is better? In my viewing experience, both are quite similar in storyline and both have very good telefilms and not so very good telefilms. But I have not seen one bad film. I was entertained with every film I watched.

I did notice that what makes Lifetime Television holiday telefilms much different is their willingness to create films featuring a diverse cast. African American family, Asian family, Latino family, interracial relationships, gay relationships, diverse communities and diverse casting. For me that was a plus, because these are stories giving viewers characters and storylines that they can identify with!

While Hallmark films, it looks as if their films have a much bigger budget. But in the end, you can’t go wrong with both, again, they tend to have similar storylines. May it be the character going back to their hometown, a character stuck in the airport due to a snowstorm, a single parent who lost their love finding love, children wanting their parent to find love and happiness in their life, person moving to a small town so different from their city life, discovering love through a work project, Santa playing Cupid and more.

I also noticed a consistency of talent featured by both channels. Lifetime Television has had multi-year consistency with featuring actress and producer Melissa Joan Hart and actor Ryan McPartlin. Hallmark has had multi-year consistency with featuring actress and producer Candace Cameron Bure and actress Alicia Witt. I’ve learned that holiday films with involvement by Hart or Bure are typically going to be entertaining holiday films with solid production. But I have to say that I also like what I’m seeing with Kelly Rowland and company for setting the bar high with their “Merry Liddle Christmas” films.

I also learned is how some of these films, to get theme ready by Winter broadcast, are shot months before and due to the pandemic, the time of shooting has been reduced by certain production companies.

And last, I also learned during my viewing is that if a film was made in 2007, 2011, 2015 or 2022, a lot of these films were created to be timeless and no matter what year you are watching, these films still fresh or new and not dated.

As they should be.

So, after watching 50 consecutive days of holiday telefilms, which ones are my favorite and on top of my list?

Here is my top 10 of the Telefilms I watched this year: