Gingerbread! Santa! Moppets! Here's your 2022 holiday movie guide
It's hot cocoa time again, it's snowman time, it's gift-giving time, and of course, it's time for "we gotta save the local gingerbread factory with the help of a hot and newly reformed corporate raider who was permanently changed when he got a dab of whipped cream on his nose."
In other words, it's time once again for holiday-themed TV movies. Does this largely mean Christmas romcoms? It does. Is Hallmark still the hallmark (I'm so sorry) of these efforts? It is. But there are also big pushes from Lifetime and Netflix, plus lots and lots more from lower-profile places, some of which (like UPtv and ION, say) are old pros and some of which (Discovery+, for instance) are newer to the game. There are family movies and kids' movies, and there are even musicals. So how on earth do you navigate? We're here to help.
Get the lay of the land
Let's start here: Your heavy hitters in terms of volume are still Hallmark and Lifetime. What's more, Hallmark has two cable channels with two different Christmas mission statements. Regular Hallmark, with its "Countdown to Christmas" event, is where you find your romantic comedies and your lighter fare. Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which calls its slate "Miracles of Christmas," is where you find the more dramatic, "inspirational" stories where people may be dealing with more straightforward grief or loss.
It's also where the straightforwardly religious material lives, like this year's The Gift of Peace (Dec. 10), about a woman who has lost her faith in God. You can find endless reruns of their movies that have already premiered, you can check out their new streaming deal at Peacock (which does not make all movies available, only some, sometimes, for a while), and you can always find their schedule online. They even have an app so you can check off the ones you've seen.
Lifetime doesn't center its network branding around Christmas movies as much as Hallmark does, but it also puts out a big schedule every time. (.) And not for nothing, it's been showcasing actors of color (especially Black actors) since well before Hallmark started the overdue broadening of its storytelling. And Lifetime continues to bring in big names, as in this year's (Dec. 3), which features Keshia Knight Pulliam, Patti LaBelle Tim Reid. Netflix, meanwhile, typically has a mix of formula romcoms (like the Lindsay Lohan-Chord Overstreet , which is really quite cute!) and things that fall more into the realm of regular comedy or kids' movies — same with Hulu. For instance, Hulu's
