She finds warmth in the familiar — a couple's meet-cute at a Christmas tree farm over spilled hot chocolate. He guffaws at the nonsensical plot points (a secret royal living undercover to experience a "real" Christmas). And while Mary and Jerry Lenaburg didn’t set out to become social media influencers in their late 50s, their witty Christmas movie reviews have attracted an enthusiastic following.

“There are some movies that should never be remade,” Jerry begins their review of Disney+’s Joy to the World, starring Emmanuelle Chriqui and Chad Michael Murray — and you know a scolding is coming. “[One is 1945’s] Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck [in] the original, the classic. We just sat through...”

“...an epic fail,” Mary picks up. They had to break their rule of fast-forwarding during the first 30 minutes of a movie, “just so we could get to the end,” she explains. “There are no Christmas trees. There [are] no Christmas ornaments. There [are] no gingerbread men. There’s not a star.”

“There’s, like, a little pile of ashes,” Jerry quips.

“[Only] the last five minutes were watchable,” Mary says, learning against her spouse as they deliver their verdict, in unison: “It. Was. Horrible.”

When you watch 50 Christmas movies a year and review them on Instagram, you get right to the point — or at least this Fairfax, Va., couple does. After all, they’re not critiquing this year’s Oscar contenders — just the famously predictable Hallmark formula: a cozy small town, a meet-cute, a misunderstanding and a guaranteed happy ending which (usually) gives viewers warm fuzzies this time of year. The movie genre has developed a cult following.

“There are so many hard things happening in the world,” Mary, 58, tells Yahoo. She and Jerry, 60, are one of those couples who finish each other’s thoughts. He chimes in: “Sometimes you just need some eggnog and a Hallmark movie.”

Through the twists and turns of life — personal trials that tested their marriage and the challenges of parenting a daughter, Courtney, with special needs alongside their son — movie nights became a cherished family tradition. And it wasn’t just the promise of a happy ending that drew them in.

Courtney, who began to have grand mal seizures when she was 5 weeks old, was cortically blind, nonverbal and used a wheelchair. “But she loved the sound of bells,” Mary says. “We used to line them around the base of our Christmas tree, and she would sort of kick from her wheelchair and laugh. And there are bells in every movie.”

When Courtney died, on Dec. 27, 2014, at age 22, the joy in the Lenaburgs’ home did for a while too. For several years, they stopped watching Hallmark movies. Then, in 2018, the couple decided to turn one on and post their reaction on Instagram. People loved it.

“I am Cindy Lou Who, married to the Grinch, so it just worked,” says Mary, an author of inspirational books and a public speaker. “Then people started asking us to review certain movies, and we’ve been doing it ever since. It's like a football game for us — we're yelling at the screen. And this year it’s gone viral.”

Adds Jerry, a military analyst and historian, “My sole purpose is to make her crack up.”

The couple, who met on a blind date and have been married for 37 years, have since branched out to films from Great American Family as well as Disney+, Netflix and Prime. Their reviews are critical, calling out tropes and sappy lines, but playful. Instead of stars, they rank the movies from zero to 5 trees (sometimes nutcrackers, burning logs or antlers). The first review of this season, rating A Royal Montana Christmas, has 750K views on Instagram.

“We roasted that movie,” Mary says. “The thing about these movies is some of them are so cheesy they make a full circle into: Oh, this is funny. So you just have to have fun with it.”

“‘Don't squat over your spurs,’” Jerry chimes in, quoting some of the dialogue in that movie. “‘Sugar’s on the table. Cream is in the cow. Give it a tug.’”

The pair, who nosh on Christmas cookies during their viewing party (Jerry also enjoys eggnog with bourbon), recently received their first negative comment — for spoiling a movie ending.

“People were so mad,” Jerry says. “It was like, Whoa — it's a Hallmark movie. Spoiler alert: There's a happy ending. Every single one is the same.”

What’s helped spread the word has been some of the actors sharing their reviews, including Candace Cameron Bure and Paul Greene. Hallmark and Great American Family have also commented on their videos.

What does their son — who’s married with his own family — think? “He does not live his life online at all,” Mary says. Adds Jerry, “He just rolls his eyes.”

From their grief, this unexpected chapter has a welcome silver lining.

“For us, Advent is hard,” says Mary, who’s Catholic. “We're going toward the 11th anniversary of our daughter's death. It's not an easy time — and our life is not all laughter and puppies and rainbows.”

Jerry adds, “Our life is not a Hallmark movie.”

But the films add levity to life’s challenges.

“The thing about grief is that it doesn’t have a timeline,” Mary says. “It’s fluid. It changes. When it comes, you greet it, dance with it for a little bit — and then it takes a rest while you keep going. Joy and sorrow always walk hand in hand — and these movies actually do that well.”

She continues, “There's always disappointment. There's somebody who is fighting a personal battle. There's often the death of a loved one. But at the end, you know they're going to make it through. You might not agree with how they get there — and it might be really cheesy at times — but they’ll get there, and you’ll think, OK, that's something I can celebrate.”