The holiday season is upon us, and if you’re one of the thousands of conventionally attractive, workaholic marketing professionals from coastal big cities across the country, you may be planning to return to your small hometown to rekindle an old romance, search for the true meaning of Christmas and/or hastily open a bakery based solely on the strength of a pun. But unfortunately, this year, “Flour Power” will have to wait.
We are in the middle of a global health pandemic, and with COVID cases surging nationwide, the CDC is urging all Hallmark movie protagonists to stay put. Do not endanger yourself and others by traveling back to your hometown for a serendipitous run-in with a single father who probably holds the key to your heart, if only you could just open up. Don’t open up. Stay closed. Inside your own home.
While we wish the rising case numbers were enough to deter you, we know Hallmark movie protagonists are particularly prone to magical thinking this time of year. This is why we are warning you: Do not read into the snow globe that mysteriously arrived on your front doorstep with no return address. This is just a coincidence, a FedEx clerical error, NOT a sign that you’ve lost your moral compass and need to take multiple modes of transportation back to your hometown to reconnect with “real” America. Just stay on your couch and watch a Tim Allen sitcom and it will come back to you.
Additionally, we want to remind you that rekindling a romance with your high school sweetheart is not a COVID-safe activity. The CDC recently compiled a list of your exes… for scientific reasons …and the data does not look good. Having never left their small hometown or experienced real oppression, 100% of these men now believe that mask mandates violate their civil liberties. They may own a Christmas tree farm, have impeccable stubble, and look amazing in plaid, but each of them has a BLUE LIVES MATTER flag hanging outside their adorable log cabin.
As a Hallmark movie protagonist, we know you’re programmed to believe that “opposites attract,” even if that means betraying everything you stand for. But if these men sincerely believe the pandemic is a hoax, that’s not a test put forth to prove your true love — that’s a red flag. So scrub those lumberjack fantasies from your mind and lurk your exes from a safe distance, on social media, like the rest of us.
We’re not saying this decision is easy. We know you’ve worked hard as the Chief Marketing Officer of Business at Skyscrapers Inc., and sometimes you wonder if there’s more to life than owning a sensible collection of jewel-tone peplum tops. Maybe things would be easier if you moved back home and started a snow globe repair shop? (We know you’re still thinking about the significance of that snowglobe you received. Put it in the closet and forget about it.) But this year, a devastating 60% of all small businesses will close. So no matter how much whimsy you put into it, the market is not right for a snow globe repair shop, and likely never will be. Be honest, this is not a thing people need with any regularity.
Again, we want to reiterate, if we weren’t currently facing the biggest health crisis of our lifetime, we would love for you to return home and discover your parents’ handyman is secretly a prince who wants to crown you Princess of the Independent Nation of Dinlandia. The CDC believes it is every Hallmark movie protagonist’s right to abandon their vague marketing career for a handsome man of nobility, so long as they don’t engage in behavior that poses a public health risk to their birth country or adopted country of Dinlandia.
If you’ve read all this and you’re still not convinced that you should cancel your trip back home, consider this stark reality: Your town’s annual Christmas Pageant, for its predicted attendance (all 1,200 town residents) and poorly ventilated space (the middle school auditorium that has not been remodeled since the 1970s), is on track to be the next big superspreader event. One in five attendees are expected to contract COVID, making your quaint town the new epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic. We are tracking this closely.