PSLs, Pajamas, and Cheap Grace

Introducing the 'Ber Months Hallmark Theology Project

Let’s goooooo

The Apostle Paul wrote to his people from prison. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from Birmingham Jail. And I am writing you... From the comfort of my imitation Eames lounge chair and ottoman. Sporting Kirkland Classic jammies from Costco whilst sipping a homemade oat milk latte with a dot of maple syrup (stirred with a cinnamon stick, of course) and I’m about to lean into my first Hallmark movie of the season.

Friends, my plea is desperate.

I am... A Hallmark addict.

I do pretty well for most of the year. I don’t think of it much. But when we get to the ‘ber months (September - December), that purple Hallmark+ logo on the home screen of my living room TV is too tempting to turn down.

Yes, I’m a Lutheran priest. I should be solemnly reading Bonhoeffer with Bach in the background. I should be pondering the cross and not letting my anthropology creep too high.

But I’m queuing up the Good Witch instead.

Here’s my Psalm...

God, help me! Save me from this fall into comfort and nostalgia! Rescue me from these predictable plotlines and oh-so-vibey flannel! I am powerless against its pull. Selah.

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It all started during the pandemic. Christmas of 2020 was, well... A wintery one. We’d moved from Chicago back home closer to family in the Eastern Sierras doing our best to remain isolated from most of the world.

I remember my first hit. The 2006 classic, The Christmas Card, where a soldier receives a card from a stranger and travels across the country to thank her because apparently that’s what people did before texting. I watched it apprehensively. But before I knew it, I was in over my head.

Springtime came and I was able to escape its clutches. I merely dabbled for the next year or so. But then, in 2022, I started my pastoral internship as a chaplain in the Washoe County (Reno, NV) Detention Center. I met with inmates, guards, mental health and medical care providers on the daily hearing their stories of pain, overwhelm, and anguish. Jesus showed up in myriad ways, but wowza, was that hard. Every night, I’d make the long drive home from Reno to Loyalton with a heartwrenching story pushing down on my chest. Not just a story, but a real, living, breathing life situation that was currently happening. And nothing felt better than flipping on a Hallmark movie.

I went into the hard stuff...

An Ice Wine Christmas
Christmas Train (SO GOOD!)
A Cozy Christmas Inn
You, Me, and the Christmas Tree (this one almost sent me to rehab)

You name it, I streamed it. Even got into the cheap Netflix knockoff stuff.

The predictably happy ending and familiar plot line provided the perfect kind of comfort after the chaos I’d walked with people through earlier in the day. The small-town guy and the big city girl always made it through, together, in love. Their abodes were chic and quaint and immaculately designed even though he worked at a coffee shop and she left her highly paid gig in the city. (Apparently small-town Vermont has very generous barista wages and HGTV budgets for everyone.)

It all worked out. Always.

---

I get it... Hallmark movies are theologically bankrupt. The stories are packaged like prosperity gospel wrapped in buffalo plaid flannel paper. And yet, I don’t care. This time of year, and with the state of the world in the shape it’s in, I’m SO here for it and I’m leaning in hard right now.

But, I ponder... What if my Hallmark addiction is telling me something true about the human situation? I can bash Hallmark (and my addiction to it) all I want, but there’s gotta be a reason why so many people (yes, FAR more than will admit---just look at the viewership ratings for Hallmark movies, holy hell) drink this stuff up like they do venti PSL’s in early September.

Let’s face it. We’re exhausted. The world is brutal. Life is accelerating. Kids are growing up in a digital AI-fueled world that’s foreign even to the generation before them. Older people feel displaced and irrelevant. Families and friends are being divided against each other by political messaging which plays us all as pawns in their sick game of supposed salvation.

And so, yeah. I want a predictable, cozy story with a beginning, middle, and happy ending. Sometimes we need a story where the worst thing that happens is a scheduling conflict in the gourd delivery at the village nursery.

Hells.
Yes.

But there’s a shadow side: Hallmark movies offer resurrection without crucifixion. They promise new life without death. They’re cheap grace in rom-com sweaters. They fill the belly nice and warm, but they don’t speak to the deeper recesses of the human soul.

The question is this: Can we honor our need for comfort without mistaking it for salvation? Can we know that Hallmark movies aren’t real life? And that even if they were, they wouldn’t bring us what our souls deeply yearn for?

This is where my Christian faith informs me... Real transformation at the soul level only comes through death. No, not necessarily after you croak (though, yes, that too). But after the multitude of deaths that you and I go through in a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. The old thing has to die for the new to emerge. Again and again (and again). It’s woefully inconvenient and discomforting, but it’s true. We aren’t built for constant rehabilitation. We’re built for death and resurrection. This is the pattern of life and we see it in the other story we know the ending of — the story of Christ’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Hallmark movies skip the death stuff. Big City Girl doesn’t die to her old life —she just relocates and switches from blazers to small town guy’s old sweaters.

But maybe that’s perfectly okay? We get the death and resurrection stuff in real life. It’s literally what life is. All the heartache. All the trauma. All the pain. All the shipwreck. And all the beauty. All the healing. All the “oh-my-gawd-we-made-it!” We live this stuff. It’s awful and great and horrifying and exhausting and life-giving. And... Sometimes we need rest and escape.

Even Jesus enjoyed a good wedding party and made the wine better. Grace isn’t just for Good Friday. Sometimes it shows up on a Saturday night with slippers on.

So here’s what I plan on doing... For the next three months (the ‘ber months), I’m going to watch a Hallmark movie based on that particular season. And I’m going to write a spiritual/theological exploration of it.

This month, we’re going deep into Halloween (we’ll see if the ‘Good Witch’ makes the final cut). Next month, we’re carving into Thanksgiving (see what I did there?). And in December, we’re getting serious with the crescendo of the Hallmark liturgical calendar... CHRISTMAS!!!

I’m going to take these movies somewhat seriously. I won’t mock them (okay, maybe a little). I’m not sure where I’ll go with this project. But I think mostly, I’ll ask: What are these stories actually offering? What hunger are they feeding? What’s some of the back story we might be missing (or that we can make up)? Why is small-town guy so afraid of commitment (and how does he get enough time to style his hair like that every day)? Where could the story have been made more cruciform (or where is it cruciform)? And where do the glimmers of sorrow in the movies lay themselves bare for the living Word of God to speak into?

I dunno. Consider it field research in American civil religion. At least tune in for a good laugh. Or at least a reason to tell your family or housemates why you’re watching Hallmark AGAIN.

Who knows what kind of mischief may ensue? Maybe grace will show up unexpectedly in these nostalgic algorithm-crafted bangers. But methinks God can totally meet us in the formulaic comfort of a Hallmark movie just as God can in the brutal honesty of the Roman execution device atop Golgotha.

Or maybe I just really like PSLs (yes, I’m a sucker for these too—SO basic) and predictable plot lines.

Either way, I’m leaning in and fa-la-la-la following the fun where it leads.