Justin Fox, Columnist

Hallmark Christmases Don't Happen in the Suburbs

Holiday-themed movies made by the company that invented the greeting card imply where we'd rather live.

December 22, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

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There is a first time for everything, and last week I watched my first Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. It was initially just a ploy to get my wife off of Twitter, which was filling her (as it does many of us these days) with angst. We turned on the TV in the middle of 2012's "A Bride for Christmas," starring Arielle Kebbel as an interior designer who after breaking off three wedding engagements has sworn off such entanglements, and Andrew Walker as an investment manager who bets a colleague that he can get Kebbel to say yes to a marriage proposal. In spite of that plot, it was not unappealing; Kebbel -- who has since gone on to a regular role on the HBO sports comedy "Ballers" -- deserves most of the credit for that.

The Hallmark Channel has been commissioning Christmas movies for 15 years, but since 2011 the effort has gone into overdrive -- with 19 new offerings premiering this holiday season and ratings going through the roof. (There was a nice portrait of the phenomenon in Bloomberg Businessweek last month.)