Step aside, Great Pumpkin. Santa’s taking over the small screen
Merry Christmas! You think I’m early? Not when TV’s shopping channels have been hawking holiday merch from tree-decorated sets for weeks now. Not when your local warehouse club has shoved aside Halloween wares to stock Santas.
Not when Hallmark Channel is about to start its annual ratings-magnet marathon Countdown to Christmas — on Halloween night.
That’s because viewers are itching to get to it, too — all that reassuring warmth, romance and reconciliation, all those dreams-come-true and Santa, too. It’s 55 straight days of seasonal uplift. Plus Mariah Carey.
Hallmark kicks it off at 8 p.m. Saturday with a family favorite to watch with your still-costumed kids. Macaulay Culkin’s Christmas-themed “Home Alone” commences the mood, before Sunday spotlights the first of the channel’s whopping 17 new original holiday films. That one isn’t Mariah’s. They’re saving her directorial debut, “A Christmas Melody,” for almost last, when she also stars in her Dec. 19 premiere. In the meantime, Hallmark delivers a double dose of new titles every week, even stuffing the long Thanksgiving weekend with new films on five straight nights.
Sibling channel Hallmark Movies & Mysteries has its own Most Wonderful Movies of Christmas festival starting round the clock Saturday. HM&M’s four new originals include Alison Sweeney’s “Murder She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery” (Nov. 22) and “Debbie Macomber’s Dashing Through the Snow” (Dec. 13). Plus, Jamie-Lynn Sigler stars in “The Christmas Note” (Nov. 29).
There’s more. Lifetime’s Very Merry Christmas event launches Thanksgiving weekend, with Nov. 28’s “A Gift Wrapped Christmas” (Meredith Hagner, Beverley Mitchell) and Nov. 29’s “The Christmas Gift” (Michelle Trachtenberg, Rick Fox); five more originals premiere in December. ABC Family beats turkey day with its “Young & Hungry” Christmas episode Nov.24, while mother-ship network ABC waits till Nov.27, the day after, for “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” to launch its string of animated faves. (“A Charlie Brown Christmas” airs Nov. 30.)
Even streaming services are holiday-happy. Netflix debuts its special “A Very Murray Christmas” Dec. 4 with Bill Murray, George Clooney, Amy Poehler, Chris Rock and more.