I live in a household that has been known to air the occasional Hallmark Christmas movie. When these Hallmark Christmas movies first began to air many years ago, their arrival on TV during the holiday season was viewed as a bit of a treat. These films always featured heartwarming stories of family and love all coming to fruition at Christmas time. The positive reception of these movies by the public caused television executives to think of this franchise as a guaranteed money making endeavour. This, in turn, has caused the Hallmark Christmas film franchise to be sent into overdrive. In the 2020s, Hallmark-style holiday movies are churned out a dime a dozen and have come to resemble the old Harlequin romance paperback serials of my youth. Just the same, in a world filled with war and poverty and natural disasters, these Christmas movies serve a purpose. We all need the ability to close our eyes and wish our troubles away once and a while. Hallmark Christmas movies allow the viewer to do just that. Everything is always perfect. All of the endings are happy ones. Everyone’s house looks immaculately decorated. There is food aplenty, romance to be had and the true meaning of Christmas always seems to play out as heartwarming music plays over the closing credits. In other words, a Hallmark Christmas is a perfect Christmas.
If you end up watching enough of these movies you can wind up convincing yourself that what you see depicted on screen is actually how Christmas is for most families. While that depiction may hold up for some, it isn’t always the way it is for most. In fact, there are many studies that have shown that the holiday season is one of the times in our year when people struggle the most with issues of mental and emotional health. The holidays can be a time of great loneliness. They can also be a time of great stress, as people are pressured to spend beyond their means, to gather with relatives they may not get along with and/or to have the holidays act as an excuse to drink to excess. Not every Christmas season unfolds in the magical, love-filled manner that those Hallmark movies would have us believe. Perhaps the very fantasy element of it all is what holds the attraction for so many.
I have two stories to share with you today that illustrate the non-Hallmark side of Christmas, if you will. Neither of these stories are awful. In fact, both stories draw well upon the true meaning of Christmas coming to pass in real life situations. However, in both cases, the spirit of Christmas came to be, as the Grinch would say, it came without ribbons, it came without tags, it came without packages, boxes or bags. The meaning of Christmas can be shown in ways that can be rough around the edges, as these two examples will illustrate, I hope.
I have a single favourite TV Christmas-themed episode. It was an episode that aired shortly after the actual Christmas Day had passed in real life. It aired as part of an uplifting, almost-too-good-to-be-true series that was quite popular in its day….Little House on the Prairie. That episode was entitled “The Blizzard” and it quite literally took my breath away as I watched it. The episodes of this TV series were based upon the pioneer stories of Laurie Ingalls Wilder. Most of the plotlines used during each episode were loosely based on these beloved books but, every now and again, the writers would call upon a specific event and make that the focus of the show. That was the case with the Christmas episode entitled “The Blizzard”.
Little House on the Prairie was set for much of its run in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, which is where the real Laura Ingalls lived with her family for some time. In real life, Walnut Grove is located near a region known today as the Great Plains. It is also not all that far from the Canadian border. In wintertime, the weather can turn bitterly cold as the winds howl down the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains and out across the great flat plains of the prairies. In 1888, a series of real-life blizzards swept across those plains. The storms were so severe that hundreds of people ended up losing their lives. Many of those who died were children who ended up becoming trapped in the storm as they attempted to make their way home from school. The loss of so many young lives has caused the 1888 blizzard to become known as “The Children’s Blizzard”. I own a book of the same name written by David Laskin. I bought the book as an adult because of my own reaction to watching “The Blizzard” episode of Little House on the Prairie air live in my warm, safe living room at home as a teen. The detailed examination of why the storm was so deadly, the decisions that were made that cost so many children their lives and the fallout from that storm makes for a harrowing but riveting read. While reading the book, I was somewhat prepared for what was to come based upon having watched it play out on TV. However, when we first gathered to watch the episode air in real time, the impact of it all left us slack-jawed in shock. We had gathered to watch Little House on the Prairie that evening in anticipation of a heartwarming happy ending. The ending we got, while heartwarming of a sort, came at a price.
“The Blizzard” takes place on Christmas Eve. The children are in school. The women are decorating and preparing for Christmas Day. The men are delivering presents in horse drawn carriages and wagons and winding down their places of work for a well-deserved break for a day or two. The weather begins to turn. There were no meteorological services available back then so people had to judge the state of the weather by their senses and past experiences. The past experience of the local school marm told her that it would be prudent to dismiss the children earlier than normal so that they would have time to walk to their homes before the storm became too severe. Not only were there no weather reports for people to check back then but, there was also no means of communication between the school and the homes where the children lived. Needless to say, no one knew that the children had been dismissed and were heading home. In fact, because of the impending storm, individual mothers decided to leave their own homes and come to the school early to pick up their own children. As the storm picked up, some of those children and mothers connected en route but some did not. Eventually, the storm turned into a full on blizzard. Everyone was caught out and about. The schoolhouse became a storm shelter. Some who made it there were suffering from frostbite and required medical attention from good ol’ Doc Baker. In some cases, mothers arrived at the school only to realize that they have passed their children in the storm. The men of the town headed into the blizzard themselves to save the wayward souls. The school marm is wracked with guilt for having dismissed the children early. Eventually all families are reunited except for one. One father freezes to death in the storm. His wife and children watch from the warmth of the schoolhouse as each family reunites but theirs. It is one of the first real emotional gut-punches I have ever received while watching a TV show as a child. It was Christmas Eve in Walnut Grove, for crying out loud! Where was our happy ending? As the extent of the disaster begins to sink in and a sense of despair seeps into the schoolhouse, Charles Ingalls takes it upon himself to go to the teacher’s lectern and read aloud the story of The Nativity. It is then that the characters onscreen begin to sense that their survival has been every bit the miracle that the birth of the Christ Child was in that stable so very long ago. The characters realize that being together with those you love all safe and sound, as we were at home, is what really matters. The tinsel and trappings are not the true meaning of Christmas. The true meaning of Christmas is love and community. By the time Michael Landon, as Charles Ingalls, finished reading aloud, my family and I took our first breath in what seemed like an hour. I can’t remember us hugging each other when all was said and done but it would not have surprised me at all if my mother had left to go to the kitchen to put the kettle on for a hot cup of tea.
What connected “The Blizzard” in my mind to my second story I wish to share is candy. In most, if not all of the Christmas-themed episodes that ever aired while Little House on the Prairie was on TV, the most luxurious and extravagant gift that the Ingalls children got to look forward to on Christmas morning was a piece or two of something called hard candy. Hard candy was a confection that could be a candy cane with peppermint flavouring or a toffee caramel square or some such treat that was hard and meant to be slowly sucked upon. The act of sucking or licking this hard candy would release small amounts of flavour over time. In this way, a small hard candy treat could bring the gift of tasty flavour over an extended period of time. It was a way of experiencing a small amount of pleasure amid the usual deprivations of hardscrabble living. Over time, the phrase “having a hard candy Christmas” came to symbolize having a little pleasure amid the pain of a typically challenging life that grinds ever onward.
In a movie that has nothing to do with Christmas, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Dolly Parton sings a song entitled “Hard Candy Christmas” as her character evaluates the state of her life and brainstorms some possible routes to improving her stock. In singing this song, Dolly Parton is harkening back to her own childhood in the backwoods of Tennessee. Parton came from a family of twelve children. They did not have the financial wherewithal to have Hallmark-type Christmas celebrations in her home growing up. Not unlike the pioneer Ingalls children, Parton and her siblings thought themselves to be lucky to receive a piece or two of hard candy during the holidays. Although Parton’s childhood Christmases were never fancy, they were filled with warmth and music. While not completely being responsible for how Dolly Parton turned out as an adult, those early Christmas memories served as inspiration for much of the charitable work for which she is now so famously known. Over the course of her lifetime, Dolly Parton has donated millions of dollars toward providing children without means of their own to have a better life. She has done this through multiple charitable organizations aimed at providing good books, healthy food and so much more to others so that those children may have the best chance possible at having a better life. Sometimes, having to grow up in challenging circumstances can lead children to develop a sense of bitterness that colours their future endeavours. But, as Dolly Parton so clearly shows in her adult life, you can also devote your energy toward attempting to make things better than they were for you so that no one else has to endure what you did. I think that Dolly Parton is a role model of epic proportions. If only more of the wealthiest among us would dedicate their fortunes toward creating a more just and equitable world for others, just think of the good that could be accomplished! Dolly Parton is my favourite Country singer for more than just her singing ability, that is for sure.
“Hard Candy Christmas” is not a Christmas song nor is it from a Christmas movie. It is a song of self-reflection and of the desire to set personal goals for achieving a better, happier, more fulfilling life. While this song may not be sung in a Christmas movie, it embodies a mindset that makes it one of the most realistic songs of the season by a country mile. If you are feeling down and overwhelmed by life then, perhaps, watching one of those picture postcard perfect Christmas movies from Hallmark is what the doctor ordered. We all need our dose of happy endings, especially when our own lives may be filled with challenges. Unfortunately, real life is challenging much of the time. For me, the real spirit of Christmas is being able to savour those precious moments of pleasure and joy that make themselves available at this festive time of the year. Every family’s story contains its ups and downs in real life. To me, what is important is to recognize those blessings when we see them. I have always believed that the true spirit of Christmas is not the amount of gifts under our tree but more the thoughtfulness of the gestures made by others toward me. Those feelings of being seen and loved are what fill my heart. In turn, I strive to make others feel seen and heard, too. Sometimes it is the smallest pleasures in life that bring us the most happiness. All of our Christmas experiences don’t have to match those found in Hallmark movies. A hard candy Christmas spent with the ones you love most is always enough.
The link to the video for the song “Hard Candy Christmas” by Dolly Parton can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website of Dolly Parton can be found here.
The link to the video for a short primer on the real blizzard of 1888 called The Children’s Blizzard upon which the famous Christmas episode of Little House on the Prairie is based can be found here. ***In the Little House on the Prairie book series, the book entitled The Long Winter discusses this storm, as well as the many other harsh winter storms that lashed the prairies back then. Ingalls writes about incidents depicted in the video linked to above such as having to dig out supply trains because the tracks were buried in tonnes of snow.
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