The Anti-Urban Streak of Hallmark's Christmas Movies

Columnist Jeb Lund has noticed a theme among the many examples of the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel (commonly referred to as the Hallmark Channel):

The world of Hallmark often resembles a kind of rear-guard action in a culture war that the network’s prime demographic is losing. The jobs, homes, community and security in the bleached pastoral hamlets showcased in the Hallmark universe are dwindling, increasingly as unreal as their TV presentation.

The channel's original program amounts to a Normal Rockwell take on Christmas, according to Lund. That vision of the United States is also obviously anti-metropolitan.

Hallmark’s movies are stridently anti-metropolitan, almost always beginning with a heroine fleeing the city on some pretext or another. The geography of her personal rescue takes the form of small towns and pastoral settings, where everyone has a nice house and a car and is probably a small-business owner or about to improve themselves by becoming one. 

The culture war did not end with the "skirmish" surrounding the lesbian kiss depicted in a commercial aired on the channel, argues Lund, and the political choices that motivate programming choices like Hallmark's come with social costs.