A few weeks back, the calendar turned to the day many spend all year anticipating.

No, not Halloween or Election Day, though those holidays have their fans. Not the end of Daylight Saving Time, either – remember, we said “anticipating,” not “dreading.”

It’s the day when the world’s cares seem to magically peel away only to be replaced by the warmth of an imagined past, as comfortable as an old sweater and as familiar as a box of old photographs.

This year it fell early on Oct. 22 as the clock ticked past midnight – marking the arrival of Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas.

Like any holiday tradition – tracking Santa’s sleigh at NORAD, laying bets on whether Amazon Prime comes through with that rushed Christmas Eve delivery – it only feels like it’s been around forever.

Still, as long as anyone can remember – since 2009 – the cable channel has been switching to wall-to-wall holiday programming near the end of October, when most Americans are still untangling their Christmas lights and haven’t yet decided whether to go with a balsam fir or a Norway spruce this season.

Owned by parent company Crown Media Family Networks, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards, the Kansas City, Mo., company that produces greeting cards, ornaments, wrapping paper and holiday-themed merchandise, the Hallmark Channel and its sister station Hallmark Movies and Mysteries – home to the somewhat edgier two-month block of programming known as Miracles of Christmas – have endeavored to make the brand synonymous with the kind of gauzy, vaguely nostalgic, comfort TV that resembles nothing so much as a Hallmark Christmas movie.

This year, Hallmark Channel and its Movies and Mysteries station are debuting 41 new Christmas movies – with premieres every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and double features over Thanksgiving weekend – to join the hundreds of movies that play in a seemingly endless rotation every year.

In tough times, Hallmark Christmas movies deliver, like a soothing cup of hot cocoa on a chilly day.

That’s why the channels turned on a dime last year as the country began to shut down in the early days of the pandemic, replacing reruns of “Frasier” and “Murder, She Wrote” with a two-week, round-the-clock emergency dose of Christmas movies, doing its part to calm an anxious nation.

While there’s a timeless quality to the genre, in recent years Hallmark’s Christmas movies have evolved into the 21st century, expanding the Hallmark Cinematic Universe to include characters and storylines more reflective of a wider audience.

Most prominently, the movies aren’t as – how to put this delicately – exceedingly white as they used to be, back when the only Black, Hispanic and Asian characters appeared on screen briefly if at all, often as the quirky friend or a wise shopkeeper, ready with sage advice when a character is forced to decide whether it’s better to stay stranded in a small town to celebrate Christmas or trudge back to the big city in time to secure that promotion. Not only are more diverse lead characters beginning to populate Hallmark movies, but a number of the holiday flicks feature interracial romance.

For the past couple years, Hallmark has even been introducing viewers to people who don’t celebrate Christmas – not the grim workaholics whose hardened hearts must be rekindled by an old-fashioned evening of caroling or a down-home present-wrapping party, but Jews. The channel has only so far produced a handful of Hanukkah movies, including 2020’s “Love, Lights, Hanukkah,” featuring a big city gal who finds out she’s Jewish after taking a DNA test – and finds love, along with an appreciation for potato latkes – but more could be on the way.

Last year, Hallmark’s “The Christmas House” featured a gay couple returning to the small town where one of them grew up to help his parents go overboard putting up Christmas decorations on every square inch of every room in their home, known affectionately in the community as, you guessed it, the Christmas House.

The movie followed an announcement by the network that it is “committed to creating a Hallmark experience where everyone feels welcome.” That, unsurprisingly, led to a boycott threat by the conservative One Million Moms organization, which complained that families could no longer watch the channel “without being bombarded by politically correct commercials and the LGBTQ agenda.” The group, which boycotted Olive Garden because it advertised on the show “Lucifer” and protested a 2019 Hallmark commercial that depicted two women kissing, gathered tens of thousands of signatures on a petition demanding Hallmark stop portraying LGBTQ characters, but the channel forged ahead.

Colorado has been a popular setting for Hallmark’s slate – including last year’s “A Christmas Tree Grows in Colorado” – a twist on the classic “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” – and “Christmas Tree Lane,” set in a fanciful downtown Denver where the titular block faces demolition to make way for a skyscraper until its denizens rally to put on a Christmas pageant that melts the heart of the greedy developer, who also learns a thing or two about the holiday spirit he thought he’d outgrown.

In 2017’s beloved “Switched for Christmas,” starring Candace Cameron Bure, one of the reigning Hallmark queens portrays a pair of mischievous identical twins who have grown apart – a distance symbolized by what appears in the Hallmark version to be an hours-long drive between their homes in downtown Denver and the quaint small town of Littleton. As the holidays approach, they decide to secretly switch places, with one Candace trading the uncluttered life of a high-powered executive who hasn’t even thought about getting a Christmas tree in her spartan condo with the divorced middle school teacher raising two adorable children in a sprawling house decked out in garlands and filled with Christmas trees. By the time credits roll, both Candaces have learned something precious about restoring balance to their lives and respecting one another’s choices.

As Hallmark Channel endeavors to broaden its offerings even further, it only makes sense that next year’s crop of new flicks will include several movies set in Colorado’s political scene, which could sure use a relaxing cup of hot cocoa and a rendering in a Hallmark version, if anything can.

A Yuletide Masquerade

Trying to persuade the owners of a candy cane company to open a factory in town, the mayor (Jared Polis) decides to throw a holiday masked ball but in a twist decides not to reveal the party’s theme to guests, leading to mix-ups and confusion as the crowd takes matters into their own hands.

A Very Colorado Christmas Carol

The Ghost of Christmas Past (Dick Wadhams) visits the executives at a marketing company who are racing to put the finishing touches on a holiday promotion, reminding them that there’s more to rekindling Christmas spirit than tinsel and flashing lights.

A Bout of Christmas Fever

A motivational speaker on a mission (Heidi Ganahl) enlists an erudite out-of-towner (Dennis Prager) in an effort to spread Christmas fever in a town that appears to have lost the holiday spirit.

Santa’s Day Off

Weary of a seemingly endless stream of children demanding presents, a disillusioned mall Santa (Jon Caldara) enlists a team of rascally elves (George Brauchler, Michael Fields, Jimmy Sengenberger) on a mission to dampen the Christmas spirit in a town that could use a jolt of holiday cheer.

No Room at the Inn

Due to a mishap at the reservations desk, two women hoping to celebrate the holidays at a historic lodge (Jessie Danielson, Brittany Pettersen) find themselves double-booked in the chalet, while another pair (Stephanie Luck, Ron Hanks) wind up being forced to share a cabin. Deciding to make the best of the cramped situation, the lodgers come up with creative ways to find holiday magic.

A Snow White Christmas

An actress (Deborah Flora) who moved to Hollywood to pursue her dreams returns to her hometown to help save the historic theater slated to be replaced by a mixed-use development. Banding together with other townsfolk pursuing the same dream (Peter Yu, Erik Aadland, Juli Henry, Eli Bremer, Ron Hanks, Gino Campana, Joe O’Dea) she headlines a holiday-tinged adaptation of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” though Hanks winds up stealing the show with his uncanny portrayal of Grumpy, while the others jockey over who gets to play Thrifty, the character created to replace Sneezy, due to COVID-19 concerns.

The Gingerbread Contest

The owner of a mountain ranch (Kerry Donovan) has big plans to compete in the annual gingerbread bake-off, but an 11th-hour disqualification leaves her with a kitchen full of cookie dough. Meanwhile, the reigning champion (Lauren Boebert), hoping to make a splash at the competition in her special red dress, becomes embroiled in plans by the town skeptic (Tina Peters) to prove the cookie crawl is rigged.