Mistletoe and peanut muffins: it’s lucky we’re Jewish

Anyone who says they aren’t a fan of Hallmark Christmas movies is either a liar or a jilted fiancé. You remember him? He’s the finance bro, always named Jayce or Tyler, who watches helplessly as his hard-working city girlfriend is forced to take an urgent pre-Christmas business trip to Sweet Daisy Hills, where she will inevitably bump into a flannel-clad lumberjack-adjacent man named Chuck. 

Stella, exhausted and over-caffeinated, intends the visit to be quick and corporate. She’s there to finalise a strategy to take over the last organic peanut-butter cup production plant in North America. Efficiency is everything, which is why the comical collision with Chuck outside “The Muffin Cup” catches her so completely off guard. One spilled Cortado later, and instead of being irritated, Chuck apologises to her coffee for what his boots have endured. And with that line, millions of viewers melt. 

Less than one musical montage later, Stella discovers herself helping with the frantic run-up to the Peanut-Muffin Christmas Market while falling, inevitably, for Chuck, the man who lives more simply, more wholesomely, more in touch with festive magic than she ever thought possible. The problem? Well, apart from her hostile peanut-butter plant takeover, there’s also her fiancé back in New York, whose calls she’s been dodging with impressive agility. 

The market succeeds; the romance teeters. Jayce arrives to reclaim Stella, beans are spilled – organic, locally roasted beans, naturally – Chuck is wounded in that silent, stoic Chuck way, and Stella stands alone, muffin in hand, metaphor complete. 

But all Hallmark narratives resolve with twinkle lights and a suspiciously well-timed mistletoe. Chuck’s nephew, named Chill, engineers a reunion, bygones become bygones, and Stella abandons her corporate identity in favour of running the last organic peanut-butter production line in the United States. Because, of course she does. 

And yet, as much as many of us love these movies, Jews will never be the sexy lead. 

Yaakov is no Chuck. Yossi is not Jayce. And Stella would die before being called Brocha-Gittel. There will never be a “Bean Cholent in Sweet Daisy Hills” on Hallmark Channel. We know this. 

And that’s perfectly fine. In fact, it’s important. 

Because this time of year, as Christmas music fills the malls and inflatable reindeer colonise suburban gardens, our children absorb a powerful lesson: we can enjoy something fully, affectionately, enthusiastically, and still know that it doesn’t belong to us. 

That’s a deeply Jewish message. 

We know who we are. We know our stories, our calendar, our rituals, our obligations. We don’t need December to pretend to include us in its mythology in order for us to feel complete. And we certainly don’t need to appropriate a festival that isn’t ours in order to give our children joy. 

It’s an expression of Jewish confidence. Perhaps, in a world that increasingly insists that everything must be for everyone, learning that some things aren’t ours and that this is okay, is an act of cultural maturity. It teaches boundaries. It teaches respect. It teaches pride in our own, without needing a Christmas tree in the corner to validate us. 

So by all means, watch the movies. Enjoy the lights. Laugh at Chuck and roll eyes at poor Jayce. See how other people celebrate something meaningful to them. 

And then switch off the TV knowing this: some stories are lovely to watch, and even lovelier not to borrow. 

The bottom line is that we don’t need a Hallmark script to feel whole. We’ve got our own plotline, our own miracles, our own ending. And unlike Stella, we don’t need to abandon who we are to get there.