They're formulaic stories in which love and goodwill toward men prevail even in the most ridiculous of circumstances, but we love our Christmas movies.
Countless hours of potential productivity have been thrown by the wayside by viewers wasting time watching the Hallmark Channel's marathons of syrupy sweet holiday movies. You know the ones that are always set in Small Town USA, where people of color and reality don't exist.
Need a reminder of what makes a sappy Christmas movie? Upgruv has you covered.
(Please note that Hallmark Channel clichés make this list a lot because no one brings on the schmaltz like the family-friendly network.)
1. Kids
Like it or not, Christmas is for and about kids. Nobody cares about a 45-year-old accountant getting his Christmas wish of overcoming paralyzation – unless the paralysis is made easier by the cute kid in his life.
But not just any kid will do. Sappy Christmas movies get bonus points if the child stars are cute, precocious or sick.
The hit 1990 film "Home Alone," is a Christmas comedy, not a sappy movie, but it follows the formula of featuring a cute kid star, Macaulay Culkin.
He played Kevin, a kid whose family accidentally forgot him at home during their trip to Paris for Christmas. That movie would have bombed and the sequels would not have been made if Kevin had been aesthetically challenged and obedient.
(Hallmark Channel)
2. Romance
Apparently Christmas is about romance, or at least that's what the Hallmark Channel would have us believe.
All of Hallmark's Christmas movies, including 2013's "A Very Merry Mix-Up," 2015's "Crown for Christmas" and 2016's "The Christmas List," feature B-list – or no-list – generically attractive characters falling in love. Hot chocolate, snow and/or a snow globe will make an appearance as the characters get to know each other.
Also, like failed U.S. Senate candidate and Alabaman Roy Moore, the Hallmark Channel believes the country's days of yore were its best years. That can be the only explanation for its sexist plots in which successful career women give up their great jobs in "the big city" to claim love in Small Town, USA.
What sense does it make for a high-achieving lawyer in New York City to leave that job to run a gift shop in Harper's Cove just because she fell in love? The male love interests in these flicks always stay put in their jobs.
3. Illness
Nothing brings the waterworks like serious illness in a Christmas movie.
Writers of these tearjerkers know what they're doing, since Americans have been rocking with this plot cliché since "A Christmas Carol" hit theaters in 1938.
Sickly Tiny Tim grabs at every viewer's heart when he says "God bless us, every one" during the Christmas dinner scene.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showing wealthy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge a vision of Tiny Tim dying because his family can't afford medical treatment on the paltry salary Scrooge pays his the child's father helped to change the cheapskate's cold heart.
We haven't been the same since.
The 1998 film "Stepmom," which starred Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris, upped the ante by incorporating cancer, death and step-parenting into 125 minutes. It's no coincidence that the film was released on Christmas Day.
4. A Miracle
A Christmas movie is dead on arrival if no one overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds.
A town must save a community center from being demolished by unscrupulous developers, a laid-off parent must find a job, or a sick person must receive life-saving treatment that was curiously unavailable until late December.
It's just the way it is. We like to see the underdog succeed.
In the 1947 Academy Award-winning "Miracle on 34 th Street," Santa Claus was forced into court to try to convince a judge that he was the real deal, and not a lunatic who regularly rocked a red and white suit and lengthy white beard just for kicks.
The movie had all the early signs of a plot that would become a Christmas movie cliché, including a precocious child.
Santa's court case was dismissed, of course.
(Hallmark Channel)
5. Death
This cliché is more prevalent in sappy Hallmark Channel movies because the family-friendly network doesn't like its characters to be divorced, but it still wants to include a cute kid to bring the love birds together.
So, in many of Hallmark's romance-driven holiday movies in which at least one of the two lead characters plays a parent entering the dating scene, he or she has lost a spouse to death at a young age. It's an odd, repetitive story line, since it would lead an ignorant person to believe that young parents are dropping dead left and right in small towns across the country.
In Hallmark's 2009 movie, "Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle," actor James Van Der Beek's plays a widower who falls in love with his kids' teacher.
In 2011's "Christmas Magic," a successful New York event planner becomes an angel after dying in a car crash, but before she can cross over to the other side, she falls in love with a widowed restaurateur and father, and helps save his business.
Sigh.
6. Poverty
Poverty porn is a big draw in Christmas movies. December is the month in which the unemployed, homeless and otherwise downtrodden really get to shine on screen but are invisible the rest of the year.
It should come as no surprise, since real-life charities often report that their phones ring off the hook from around Thanksgiving to Christmas with calls from people who want to volunteer to feed the needy or make monetary or clothing donations. By January, all is quiet again.
It's as if people think hunger hibernates in all but two months of the year.
(Hallmark Channel)
7. A Really White Christmas
The Hallmark Channel really loves for its movies to be set in small towns, where, for some reason, all or nearly all of the residents are white. There might be a black friend or co-worker thrown in the mix from time to time, but for the most part, the town gatherings always look like Republican National Convention rallies.