(No. 5.5) Cheese-o-Cheermeister
Holiday movies induce sincerity, amplified by the now or never
Hello and welcome to the first 0.5 post on Desire Path.
Sometimes I have more to say than what fits the theme or scope of a topic. So, like I did when I created this newsletter, I’m indulging myself. This is a half post, a sibling to the other. Half in length but full in fervor. Read the first half below:
For this jaunt continuum, I want to explore the question of why we let exceedingly cheesy Christmas movies ruin our lives for the run of December. That is, if you celebrate Christmas, a little or a lot. They’re produced like mad, Hallmark leading the charge and Netflix not far behind, and they hold an important clutch on the season's experience.
(If you haven’t read my piece on the solstice and how the experience of winter holidays sort of manifests and creates the holidays themselves, here’s a link to no.5).
After the house is decorated and the Main Events are scheduled (i.e. shopping, ice skating, wine mulling, Santa visiting), there are some weeknights and quiet moments when the season must be savored lest the January anxiety settle in, as it does now. Without the will to adventure or create, holiday media is gobbled up. What’s left after the classics is a slew of holiday episodes and terrible movies starring early 2000s celebrities, but they don’t deter us. We have all month.
People like these movies. People watch these movies. These stories unwrap a deep urge in us to say what we mean and unmask. I think the sport-oriented among us would akin it to the itchy raw feeling before the final buzzer. The neurodivergent among us may be sighing in relief at the overt earnestness that is otherwise, for lack of a more impactful word, too cringe.
The end of December gives us an incentive AND occasion. An opportunity unfound in the rest of the calendar year to be both expressive and action-oriented.
What do you have to admit to yourself, to others? Are you in love with someone? Do you want to stand up for yourself? Is your business failing? Do you want to save the animals at the shelter? Whatever the topic, there’s a holiday movie about just that.
Brene Brown would coin this vulnerability “entering the arena” (via Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech often referenced by this name) and urge everyone to be active participants in the risks we face. To strive valiantly. Here’s a bite of Roosevelt’s speech:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions… so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
The movie that especially had me thinking about this free-pass-for-cheesiness is Happiest Season on Hulu. Obviously, another coming out movie is Not what the queer community needs, but in all its tropes, the truth countdown ticks and Kristen Stewart is fantastic. Another movie in a lineup of formulaic content.
But if something is popular, it’s well-liked—or at least well-acknowledged—by many many people. Stories that resonate widely are the ones we tend to acknowledge… good or bad, well-written or not.
Maybe the truth serum comes from the new year? In my teenage years, there was nothing more exciting than the countdown to midnight and the thought that I might just have to kiss the cute floppy-haired brunette that happened to be standing next to me at that moment completely by design. It’s a breath of fresh air to be prompted by circumstances instead of having to prompt yourself… but maybe that’s just my perspective as a reserved person who constantly coerces myself into conversation and pseudo-ease.
If we’re talking romance on NYE, maybe we should be talking about its proximity to Christmas. A holiday that is romantic in a way that Valentine’s Day could never be. There’s no sharp bitterness or unattached kneejerk. No impulse to be in or out, black or white, romantic or otherwise invisible to the action. Christmas and Yuletide celebrations include the love between family, friends. Between communities and neighbors. Between classes and the otherwise unseen. That’s arguably the most romantic part about it.
This free flow of love that extends beyond the romantic is novel in many Western experiences. Our family structure is so hardened to the nuclear model. One lawn mower per household on the street, each bearing the burden of purchasing cost, maintenance, fuel, and storage. We’ve bred a rigidly singular view of the self, so when there’s something to experience together, especially something like Christmas, which is so deep in lore and ancestry, it’s uniquely appealing to our basic human need for interconnectivity.
Sincerity flows and floats around the holidays. It comes “without packages, boxes or bags.” It comes in Hallmark movies and in complaints. In financial strain and in New Year’s Eve kisses.
Muah.
[Fin]