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There are various debates as to when the Christmas season officially begins. In the US, traditionalists and other right-thinking individuals put it on the Friday after Thanksgiving, introduced by the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (For those in countries where “color” has an extra vowel, this all takes place on the Friday after the fourth Thursday in November – let’s just say it’s “late November” to make things easy). The Christmas season then runs until Epiphany Eve (the night before the Feast of the Epiphany), better known as 12^th Night, from which we get the 12 days of Christmas.[1] (Christmas’ twelve days don’t build up to Christmas, but actually start with Christmas on December 25^th and run through January 5^th.)[2] On religious calendars, the period before Christmas is Advent, which runs from the fourth Sunday before Christmas through Christmas Eve.[3]
 

All of this is by way of background, because if you’re a television executive, the Christmas season began at 12:01am on October 25 when Lifetime kicked off their 2019 Christmas programming by airing Dear Santa (2011), the first of 125 Christmas movies they will play this year. All told, Lifetime will present 1,000 hours of holiday programming including 30 new Christmas movie premiers. Not to be outdone, Hallmark also started their Christmas programming on October 25 with the premiere of A Merry Christmas Match, the first of 40 new Christmas movies they’ll be presenting this year split between the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. They also have several new Christmas specials, including A Very Happy & Friends Yule Log – three hours of Happy Cat and Happy Dog on Christmas Eve in front of (what one presumes will be) a Happy Fire.
 

Netflix and UPtv enter the hunt for your holiday binge watching attention with at least nine new Christmas programs each, including Let It Snow, which features the most inclusive Christmas pageant since Love, Actually. And, of course, there are several new Christmas movies playing in theaters this year, led by Last Christmas, which features Emilia Clarke in her most un-Khaleesi role since Game of Thrones, playing a department store elf in a Christmas romantic comedy. Rounding out the pack are OWN with three entries, Freeform with two, and ABC, Disney+, ION, and TVOne with one new Christmas movie each.
 

So, if you’re the sort who can’t get enough Christmas, we invite you to check our list of 2019’s Christmas originals and challenge you to see how many you can see this year.

2019’s Original Christmas Shows

[1] Since 1984, PNC has calculated the cost of giving the “12 gifts of Christmas” as referenced in the traditional Christmas carol. For 2019, it will set you back $38,993.59 US to buy all the referenced gifts at brick-and-mortar retail outlets – or $42,259.91 US if you buy them online due to the added costs of shipping.

[2] Some think that 12 Night is January 6, but they’re just wrong.

[3] This means Advent has a variable number of days each year – to simplify things, the makers of Advent calendars use a fixed number of days counting from December 1st. The exact number of days varies between 24 and 24, depending on if you count Christmas Day itself.