It’s that time of year. Time for the wall to wall coverage, no breaks, ass perched on that couch and not you’re leaving until the start of the new year. Cheering for the spectacle and tradition, anticipating the premiere of the rookies, and hoping to see your favorites on the screen.

Am I talking about football season? Hell no, I still don’t understand that game. I’m talking about the Hallmark Christmas Movie Season.

The Hallmark Christmas Movie season has begun! Forget your pagan Halloween, you heathens. Screw that holiday when white settlers essentially gave the gift of syphilis and we now celebrate by gorging on turkey legs before running people over in Walmart aisles. Tis the season of corny, formulaic movies where the dialog is straight out of an abstinence-only curriculum and the kisses last less then 2.3 seconds.

I love it.

And what do I love just as much as these movies? A drinking game. So, let’s combine the two. It’s my Christmas gift to you (sans receipt).

The Cool Table’s Hallmark Christmas Movie Drinking Game

Take a Sip When…

• You see either Candace Cameron Bure, Lacey Chabert, Ashley Williams, or Nikki “I remember you from MMC” DeLoach’s names in the opening credits.
• Every opening shot that’s supposed to be New York City or San Francisco, but really, we all know it’s Toronto. We’re on to you, Hallmark.
• You first see the protagonist living in said big city and trying to find her way (i.e. working towards a promotion, waiting for a proposal from her career-obsessed and Christmas hating boyfriend who is clearly over-moussed, establishing her budding antiques shop/cupcake bakery/ice sculpture design studio where her only client is her overbearing but lovable older sister/mother/closeted gay best friend).
• The clearly wrong for her boyfriend either hates Christmas, doesn’t propose, shockingly dumps the heroine, or spends more time on his iPhone 8 plus than he does with her.
• You figure out the movie is an ad for Balsam Hill.
• The main character must either return to her small hometown or visit a mountain community to temporarily run a bed-and-breakfast, save a Christmas festival, or completely rescue a town just in time for Christmas.
• The town has the words, “Pine,” “Holly,” “Mountain,” “Ridge,” or “Cedar” in their name.
• The obvious love interest is a rancher, a logger who only cuts down Christmas trees and replants three in its place, a candy shop owner, a puppy photographer, or a single father who tries but struggles to make time for his two children – always a boy and a girl because that’s how the Lord intended.
• Our leading lady is awestruck by a delicate snowfall and acting like she didn’t even know snow was physically possible. Like at all.
• When the heroine comes this close to kissing her love interest only to be interrupted by either the witchcraft snowfall, a clitblock neighbor, or Auntie Marie bringing over her famous Christmas cookies. Give it a rest, Marie. We all know you use Pillsbury slice-and-go sugar cookies, bitch.
• Hallmark realized that white people aren’t the only people who love Christmas and finally put more racial diversity in their movies.
• It’s clear that Hallmark has a ways to go when they still portray Auntie Marie living with her “roommate,” Gloria in a one bedroom cottage.
• The town randomly breaks out into caroling or a poorly choreographed hip-hop dance routine to an equally cringeworthy remix of “Sugar Plum Fairy.”
• Someone, most likely the love interest or Auntie Marie or even Gloria, has to explain the real meaning of Christmas to the protagonist.
• Our leading lady and her true love finally kiss, typically by a Christmas tree, for less than five seconds. No tongue, you sinners.

Remember, always drink responsibly and drunk tweet us when you do.

_{Portions of this article first appeared in December 2016 at That’s Normal.}