(Photo from Sharing Christmas)
‘Tis the season when people binge on those made for television holiday romance movies – mostly associated with the Hallmark Channel but, to be fair, there are plenty on Lifetime as well.
What strikes me about the genre is how business-centric it seems to be. Though there are other types of plots (riffs on Cinderella/Roman Holiday/Sound of Music are always popular), a fairly common storyline is that there is some business that revolves around Christmas and is enjoyable for the townsfolk but relatively unprofitable. The characters have to find a way to make the business viable without turning it over to a soulless corporate operator who will lay everyone off and destroy its essential character. Typically, this involves teaching someone the true meaning of Christmas and the special value added to a company by longtime employees who put their hearts into their work.
It’s not that this is new, exactly; Christmas stories about profit-motive versus philanthropy trace back at least as far as Miracle on 34th Street (if not A Christmas Carol). But viewed through a business lens, Miracle on 34th Street is a tale of shareholder primacy. Of course, Santa didn’t care about profits; he only wanted to make children happy. But Macy’s managers discovered that they would generate more wealth if they adopted a pretense of generosity, which is why they embraced Santa’s strategy.
The world looks a little different in Hallmark/Lifetime land. It might, in fact, maximize profits to automate the bakery or relocate the bakery or renovate the community theater or renovate the ski lodge or sell the Christmas tree farm or sell the reindeer farm or evict the Christmas shop or close the toy store or close the toy store or close the toy store, but the characters find a way to generate some minimum profit that’s enough to keep things running while providing steady jobs for devoted employees and special memories for consumers. And that’s the happy ending.
In other words, the goal is to create a sustainable business model that meets the needs of all stakeholders without conferring a fortune on anyone. I suppose we might call this the It’s a Wonderful Life view of business.
To be sure, some of the movies are more in the Miracle on 34th Street vein: the perfect advertising campaign is the one that captures the Christmas spirit because that’s what moves the product, but the notion of business as an anchor for a community seems to be the overwhelming favorite.
That said, almost all of these businesses are privately owned, so there are no public shareholders – or activists – to interfere with the mission. And maybe that’s the Miracle on 34th Street difference: