I don’t think of myself as a snob. But I start to reevaluate that when I hear a radio ad for Hallmark Christmas movies. When you feel very strongly about something, it feels true. I’m the cultural NIMBY, wondering in disbelief, “How can anybody want to watch these things?” Just like the NIMBYs who look at a fully leased apartment building and think, “Nobody wants to live like that!”

There are occasions when I think it would be nice to be less snobbish, less sophisticated, whatever you call it. Some would simply call it having good taste, but I don’t go that far. There’s a part of me that would like to be able to enjoy these easy, predictable holiday flicks unironically, as, I assume, many people do, instead of doing MST3K in my head. I’d like to be able to boil whatever spaghetti is on sale and open a jar of tomato sauce and toast some Texas Toast and have spaghetti night. Not to judge everything by the theoretical best.

On the food question, I’ll make my own sauce from canned tomatoes, or even, occasionally, from fresh ones. Spaghetti has to be bronze-cut. On the movie question…I’m not much of a movie person anyway, but if I were, the Hallmark stuff wouldn’t be any higher on my list.

(I don’t even like It’s A Wonderful Life—the half-serious review I’m never going to write for it begins, “As soon as I’d finished watching It’s A Wonderful Life for the first time, I looked up the definitions of ‘schmuck’ and ‘schlemiel,’ to determine which one better described George Bailey.”)...