Golnaz Taherian | Arts Editor
Featured Image: Romantic Christmas movies can get people into the holiday spirit. | Courtesy of Creative Commons Zero
It’s that time of year again: December is rolling in, and with it, a fresh collection of holiday movies.
Winter is the best season to indulge in a fantastic Christmas flick that takes you away from mundane reality, and into a world of candy canes and snowy wonderlands.
Netflix’s 2018 film, ‘The Holiday Calendar‘, by Bradley Walsh, is a delightful, magical experience. In this quirky film, Abby (Kat Graham) is a struggling artist living in small-town America. Her best friend, Josh (Quincy Brown), has just returned from exploring the globe and building a successful travel-blog.
Abby yearns to fulfill her dreams and acquire a studio downtown, to help build the local art scene, but she’s frustrated working an exhausting photography gig for a grumpy boss. She craves artistic freedom and autonomy in her job. She is inspired by Quincy’s fearless attitude, and wishes she had more courage.
When Christmas comes, Abby’s family throws a party. During the festivities, Abby’s beloved Gramps (Ron Cephas Jones) gifts Abby her deceased grandmother’s antique Advent calendar. The next morning, a small door opens in the calendar, and a tiny pair of boots appear. The same day, Quincy happens to gift her a similar pair of boots. The following morning, a Christmas tree appears in the calendar’s second door. That night, Abby is driving. On the road, a man’s Christmas tree falls off his car roof. This pattern continues throughout the movie: every morning she finds a small item in the Advent calendars open door. She encounters the same item later in the day, as though by magic.
Like many Christmas movies, this one is highly idealized. Everyone lives in a big, suburban house. Everyone is photogenic and perfectly dressed. Even the unemployed men at the soup kitchen seem healthy and happy. These cookie-cutter holiday movies offer a sparkly escape from the real world, like grandma’s cookies: warm, gooey, delicious, and sugary. They let you forget about exams, jobs, bills and money, and invite you into a picture-perfect dreamscape.
However, these Christmas movies are often predictable, overly romanticized and shallow. You won’t find masterpieces of cinema in the Christmas section of Netflix, that’s for sure.
‘The Holiday Calendar’ suffers from unrealistic acting and insufferable dialogue. Abby’s bubbly personality grates on one’s nerves after a while, while Quincy seems affected, trying too hard to be cool.
Thematically, the film follows a predictable course. Abby’s professional and romantic problems are spontaneously solved at the end when Abby and Quincy kiss. Quincy buys Abby her downtown dream studio as a gift, and then it’s happily ever after.
Mollia Weidman, fifth-year visual arts and psychology student, discusses how Christmas movies alter her perception of the holidays: “Holiday movies exemplify a certain type of family orientation, and I think a lot of people in real life may not have that picture-perfect family. So, when you’re watching those movies when you’re young, you may have a different view, or expectation of what Christmas should look like. Especially for people who have different cultural backgrounds, it may not apply to them at all.”
Stephen Tran, first-year computer science student, enthuses over Christmas movies. However, he states: “They exaggerate a lot of things. The way I celebrate the holidays is not that extravagant. Christmas movies are very exciting, but that’s not usually what happens.”
Even though ‘The Holiday Calendar’ is idealized and has some flaws, it redeems itself through its contribution to Christmas cheer, spirit, and positivity.
