Ten Things I Learned at the Hallmark Re-Education Center

(AKA my parents’ house, where the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movie marathon provided ambience for our weekend) **Disclaimer follows playful rant**

1. Home is where the heart is. Home is never, ever a metropolitan area.

2. America faces a serious mental health crisis; cases of amnesia are on the rise.

3. Travel snafus are infinitely more effective than OKCupid or match.com.

4. Balsam Hill produces the only real Christmas trees; Charlie Brown’s was bullshit.

5. Omaha Steaks are aged at least 21 days, and everyone on my Christmas shopping list needs them.

6. If you have optimized your life for the possibility of real happiness, your collection of Christmas ornaments should be color-coordinated.

7. White people, white people, white people, white people – token! – white people white people… (so American society is like structurally racist duck duck goose, but charming)

8. Hallmark Corollary of the Friends Paradox: no matter what financial difficulties they discuss, other people can live in a Manhattan apartment or country home much nicer than you can afford.

9. Hardworking career women just haven’t learned the value of family yet.

10. “Maudlin” is both an aesthetic and an ethos.

**DISCLAIMER** My parents are actually lovely people; moreover, my values and theirs largely align, which is more than many of my elder-Millennial compatriots can say of their own Boomer parents. If you, like my parents, happen to like Hallmark Christmas movies, it is likely that you, like them, are not actually responsible for social, cultural, or moral decline, except insofar as you inflate the ratings of subpar television programming :)