Thanks to Lifetime, the Hallmark Channel, and Netflix, dozens of new Christmas movies hit the airwaves every November and December. And even though Christmas flicks can be enjoyed by people of all religions (because pretty much everyone can understand true love, corniness, and sparring family members), it's high time for these channels to start branching out to honor other holiday traditions. Hallmark Channel just announced it's producing two Hanukkah movies for next year, and the news is so exciting.
As reported by Forbes, Hallmark's parent company Crown Media just announced that the two Hanukkah-inspired films are in the "early stages." One of the two movies, titled Holiday Date, will have “Hannukah elements … which is a lot of fun as Hanukkah and Christmas overlap in 2019," a Crown Media spokesperson told Forbes. (Hanukkah 2019 is Dec. 22 through Dec. 30.)
That seems to be the only information available about either of the two films, and it's a bit of a bummer that Holiday Date doesn't sound too Hanukkah-focused. As someone who grew up celebrating Hanukkah, it would be pretty cool to see that holiday celebrated on-screen the same way that Christmas is — especially since in so many of Hallmark's Christmas movies, Christmas is basically a character.
“We do not just make Christmas a backdrop or an after-thought,” Crown Media's executive VP for programming and publicity Michelle Vicary said of Hallmark's Christmas movies, Forbes reported. "Christmas is really part of the story."
This is not the first time Hallmark hinted at the possibility of producing Hanukkah movies. In an interview with Glamour last month, Vicary revealed that Hallmark's executives were in talks about producing a Hanukkah movie. "One of my development execs brought me one this week that they were really excited about," Vicary told Glamour. "I said, 'Great, let's meet and talk about it for 2019.'"
In the meantime, there are luckily a few awesome Hanukkah movies that are worth re-watching this holiday season (especially since Hanukkah starts Sunday, Dec. 2). There's Eight Crazy Nights, Adam Sandler's animated movie about a boy discovering the meaning of the holiday season, which is available to rent from Amazon for $4. The Hebrew Hammer, also available to rent from Amazon for $4, tells the story of a Jewish detective who partners with the Kwanzaa Liberation Front to take down Santa's evil son, who wants to abolish Hanukkah.
My person favorite Hanukkah movie (rather, 23-minute special episode) is A Rugrats Chanukah, which you can buy for $2 on Amazon. In the holiday special, the Rugrats teach viewers the story of the Jewish holiday by playing the historical characters, so that they can learn the meaning of Hanukkah.
But despite those kick*ss Hanukkah movies, the holiday's pop culture lexicon is sorely missing some romance. Here's hoping Hallmark applies its classic romantic, satisfyingly-predictable formula to the two upcoming Hanukkah films, because watching two people fall in love over a game of dreidel sounds like an A+ plot.
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