Okay, I admit it. I am a sucker for Christmas movies. While “It’s A Wonderful Life” is on my list of all time favorite films, I can happily sit and watch all the silly formulaic holiday films you can throw at me. I’m delighted to watch this year’s token Chanukah film as well, doesn’t really matter to me. As my husband would tell you, shaking his head, they are all the same movie just with slightly different settings, situations and actors. And my response is, yes, that’s true but I don’t care!

I’m not the TV watcher in our family. In fact, I am most often reading while my husband watches a show or a movie or sports. I refuse to have a TV in the bedroom and when I travel, I never ever turn on the TV in a hotel room.

Yet this time of year, there is something about these movies that just speaks to me. I know that in each one a couple will “meet cute,” encounter some challenge, separate and then, of course, reunite in front of the Christmas tree or the menorah or under the mistletoe. Princes and princesses, puppies, you name it, I have seen the gimmick, recognized it for what it is and loved it anyway.

I think it’s a form of therapy for the season. It’s simple and mindless and always, always happy. It takes me away from making lists, wrapping gifts, finishing end of year projects, the sheer chaos that my life includes pretty much every day. I won’t go so far as to say it is a kind of meditation but I will say that it is to a way lose yourself for a little while, to immerse yourself in a place where all things have happy endings.

Life, we know, isn’t like that. Joy is often tinged with sadness, holidays that are filled with family also hold reminders of those with us only in our hearts and thoughts. Is it wrong to escape into a world where it all works out, without question, every single time? I don’t think so. I think it yet another way for us to nourish and fill our full hearts.