It’s odd to my family, everyone who knows me, and even to myself, but I’m totally into Hallmark Christmas movies. You’d think that after decades in the cynicism-industrial complex, I’d be inured to their Mad Lib plotlines, laughably repeated tropes — who knew so many Central European royals find holiday romance in rural America?! — and uncritical celebration of small-town rectitude. But, in fact, I find all of that a cozy, frictionless way to spend an evening after a long, brain-sapping day of whatever it is I do.
As far as I know, none of these movies has been set here. Las Vegas is, let’s say, contraindicated for the Hallmark holiday treatment, and not just because we lack snow. Indeed, it doesn’t take much of a shift in perspective to see all that small-town charm and authenticity as the everyone-in-your-business smothering that people come here to escape for three days, trying on different versions of themselves in the personality labs of the Strip. The relationship narratives this city specializes in are more complicated and not especially Hallmarkian: There are apparently a lot of sugar daddies in this town — one in every 52 dudes, if you believe this — and when a prince does visit, he’s less likely to woo a commoner than end up naked and in the tabloids. Also, this can be a very lonely place.
But, hey, maybe I’m wrong. I mean, last year, Clark County issued a whopping 79,279 marriage licenses — which suggests an average of 222.6 couples a day find a workable overlap between true love and Sin City. So let’s imagine a hinterlands events planner who comes here to make it big. She meets a charming sports bettor; they flirt through set pieces at, say, the wax museum and Red Rock. He gives his winnings from a gutsy bet on the Raiders to Toys for Tots; she’s smitten. Then a tragic Mad Libs plot device breaks them up. On Christmas morning, she’s stuck in orange cones on Koval, glances up, and there, on Sphere — thanks to an executive who’s a sucker for true love — it’s him, 367 feet high, proclaiming his love, kiss-kiss, the end. Frothy, you suggest; treacly? Only if they do it right! And you bet I’d watch it.
