Why are Christmas movies so comforting?

In the 20 years since Love Actually was released, I've rediscovered a love of Christmas movies.  

Part of me harks back to watching White Christmas with my Grandmother.  Cuddled up on the sofa, sipping proper cocoa made with jersey milk.  It would be so thick you could use it as grout, but it was rich, creamy and made, as with everything my Grandmother did, with love.

Last year, I started my Christmas movie a day, epic.  And once again, this year, I doing the same.  Watching schmaltzy films and horror movies and action movies.  But all come with Christmas featured in them.

​We can argue whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but other action films, such as Fatman definitely are.

Earlier this week I witnessed a small argument at work:
It is
No, Die Hard is not a Christmas movie
It is, you know
No, it's not
Yes, it is ....

Watching White Christmas, and all the other films from the 50s that my Grandmother loved, allows me to sit and snuggle down into the happy memories that she and I made together.

But there is another side of watching a film again and again and again.  

The familiarity of the film allows you to let it wash over you.  You see things that you had forgotten and get that jolt of happiness from the memory of when you first saw it.

However, for me, it's being able to have it, almost, as background to creating a new memory that you now attach to the film.  

​I'll often have it onwhen I'm knitting or baking.  The feel of the yarn, the small of the cookies, then become intertwined with the film, the music, the memories of previous years.

It is almost as though you can make a memory even bigger and brighter and more wonderful by adding to it again and again and again.

I try to sprinkle in, new films, some of which will become favourites and others are to just to pass the time.  
​
A Castle for Christmas was watched the year it came out because I knew one of the ladies who had dyed the yarn for the movie.  It is now the first film that I start my watch days off with.

Then today, watching another Hallmark film (yes, you can joke that they all have the same plot) I was struck by something.

These films are not just feel good films.  

Yes, the women in these films are normally successful, confident women.  Yes, they always find that they have lost touch with life and find meaning through some wonderful handsome man.

But there is one thing that is refreshing in these movies.  These women are always middle age.  They are at least 30 if not early 40s.  They are attractive but that is secondary to the skills that they have in the films.  They are lawyers, CEOs, chefs, you name it.  They are financially independent (mostly) but have often isolated themselves from everyone. 

Yes, they often fall for the guy, but often they fall for finding friendship with other great women.

For me, it is this last thing that I find the most fulfilling with these films.  Connections, relationships and friendship.