A true American Christmas isn’t something you buy, stream, or argue about online. It’s something you carry. It lives in the heart, shaped by faith, family, memory, and moments that stay with you long after the lights come down. Nobody can steal that. A few years back, Hallmark Christmas movies came under fire for being too traditional, too nostalgic, too reflective of an older moral framework. Slate complained they portrayed a fantasy where America had somehow been “made great again.” Salon argued they sold a durable but false vision of a country that never existed. These are worldly publications that rarely miss a chance to criticize faith, tradition, or small-town American life. But their view has never been the whole story.
By Christmas, winter had fully settled in on the farm. We usually overwintered eight brood cows and as many as sixteen horses. Feeding time was brisk and efficient, driven by the wind and lake-effect cold rolling in from Lake Erie, fifty miles to the north. We started in the hay mow, tossing bales down, filling the mangers and feed boxes. Then came a yodel that carried through the barn, and the animals responded like clockwork. The cows stepped into their stanchions. Each horse found its own stall. As bodies filled the space, the barn warmed, and we moved down the line filling water buckets. If the pump had frozen, I grabbed a bucket and an axe, headed to the pond a hundred yards away, and hauled water back one trip at a time. That was winter. No drama. Just work that had to be done.
One snowy Christmas stands out. About eight inches of fresh snow covered the ground, the kind that muffles sound and sharpens the cold. We got the livestock in early, and Dad asked if I wanted to play in the snow for a bit. He already had something in mind. He saddled Hollywood, his champion palomino Quarter Horse stallion, grabbed a long rope, and tied it to the handle of a scoop shovel. The plan was simple. He’d gallop Hollywood along the field, pulling the shovel, and I’d ride it, gripping the handle as we skimmed across the snow. In theory, it sounded perfect. In practice, it took a few bone-jarring bumps and unexpected launches, courtesy of hidden corn-stalk stubs, before I found my balance. Once I did, it was, as we said back then, swell. A small moment. A big memory.
That’s the America critics miss. Those traditions didn’t come from a script or a marketing department. They were lived, handed down quietly, and carried forward. The America once portrayed in Hallmark stories still exists in homes and hearts across this country, not just at Christmas, but every day of the year. It reaches beyond religious lines, politics, ethnic backgrounds, and all the labels used to divide us. We aren’t perfect, but we aim to be kind and civil. Christ put it plainly in Luke 6:31, “And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise.” That America still lives in those who love God, country, and family. You and I are part of it, and no one gets to take that away.
