Maybe I was a little harsh on the holidays yesterday. I'm pretty much a full-blown sentimental sap when it comes to the spirit of the season, and I shouldn't let a few clouds and a bit of drizzle suck that out of me. It's one of my defining traits. (Another defining trait is forgiving the cynics for not sharing my sentiments. If I can be me, you can certainly be you.)

In the warm light of a new day with enough of a hint of sunshine to soothe my bedraggled soul, I am now recalling how much of the last few weeks I've spent watching Christmas movies that are as sentimental and sappy as I am, and loving it. And I'm not talking about the classics like It's a Wonderful Life and Holiday Affair (the original version, with Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh).

Those are great, too, but I've been watching the ones on Lifetime and Hallmark. These are the movies with wide-eyed children, the kind I know for a fact still exist despite the tenor of the times. They're the movies with Santa Claus, or someone who thinks he's Santa Claus, or someone who acts enough like Santa Claus that you're pretty sure it's him but you can't ever really know.

They're the movies with the totally believable miracles that change ordinary people's lives. Scrooge turns benevolent and the Grinch learns to grin, and everyone gets what they deserve. I'll take that kind of ending any day (and all day every day, in the case of the Hallmark Channel this time of year). Sure, I like zombies and robots and aliens. But I like Santa, too.

Inevitably I will probably break down and put up some decorations in the house, maybe even the tree (although there's not enough room for it, really, with the treadmill taking up so much of the living room). And I will at some point find myself in the mood for "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Away in a Manger," as usual. But I'm not quite there yet.