In Defense of The Spirit of Christmas Or A Movie Rebuttal From a Spirited Superfan
December 18, 2020The following post is a response to the recent review of The Spirt of Christmas from The Sheriff of Saraham. This is our first post from a very distinguished member of Bloggin Hood’s community. Without further ado, the following are the words of The Sheriff of Saraham.
Que the music.
Listen. Listen.
Does The Spirit of Christmas have tropes sweeter than eggnog, dialogue staler than fruitcake, and glaring plot holes you can drive a snowplow through?
Yes.
Do I love it without reservation?
Also yes.
It turns out I’ll overlook a lot of things when I’m busy looking at a handsome 1920s ghost.
I understand how patently ridiculous the fact that Daniel is a ghost but not a ghost at Christmas time is. I understand that, for almost 100 years, there have been no answers, and that each Christmas Daniel has been allowed to use the inn as his own personal mopery. I understand that Kate’s red party dress and side ponytail are patently horrible sartorial choices. I understand that the writers themselves couldn’t be bothered to write an actual ending. But I just don’t care!
There are things that I truly enjoy about this movie, and no Grinch* 1 will ever change my mind.
Kate Jordan, the Heroine
I love me a spunky, can-do heroine who doesn’t back down from a challenge. Kate may have all the hallmarks of a… Hallmark/Lifetime heroine** 2, but she also has a tenacity that puts her ahead of other milquetoast protagonists.
Kate Jordan is a lawyer who knows what she wants, and also what she doesn’t want. Her opening scene sees her sighing with relief as her boyfriend breaks up with her for being too busy with lawyering to love him. The last thing Kate wants is a proposal, so she quickly dismisses him. But not before snagging and finishing his dessert. (Yes, Kate!) Her boss tells her to return to Boston and attend the mandatory Christmas party, to which Kate says “Shove it.”
While, yes, Kate is a Lifetime lead, and that means her ultimate purpose in life is to find love, she also shows a headstrong nature that even a grouchy ghost can’t dampen. Ready for a big promotion at work, she jumps at the chance to act as executor to the stately Hollygrove Inn, and she doesn’t let the obtuse warnings of Walter the innkeeper scare her away from staying the night by herself. (The good news here is that Walter isn’t an old-fashioned sexist, he’s more of a dad figure, so his protectiveness manages to not feel patronizing).
After settling in for a long winter’s nap, Kate hears a noise downstairs and knocks herself out when Daniel startles her. Shockingly, I find myself preferring this to the standard “Oh I’m so clumsy I slipped on ice into the arms of a big strong man” move that usually occurs in these movies. Luckily, she doesn’t suffer any brain damage*** 3, and the next day she gets her first good look at the good lookin’ ghost.
Grumpy and handsome ghost Daniel wants her to leave, but Kate staunchly refuses to. Now, I don’t love that Daniel’s go-to move is to fireman-carry Kate out of the inn (he just wants to be broody and handsome, Kate!), but she gets back in that inn and continues on her mission. Luckily, Walter returns for Exposition Purposes, and this only hardens Kate’s resolve to stay.
Not only does she love a challenge, she also actually manages to use skills pertinent to her job! Lawyers do a lot of research for their cases, and you can watch Kate logic her way through a very illogical plot. And I use the word “logic” very loosely. Kate decides to use her hard-headedness to their advantage, and puts her sweet, sweet lawyering skills to work in order to find the answers Daniel lacks. She puts together some very obvious clues to help Daniel discover his past and his fate. I don’t know enough about lawyers to dispute this, but I respect that Kate has listened to enough true crime podcasts to recognize that opportunity has come a-knocking.
True Crime Kate is a fun departure from the usual Christmas heroine, and she doesn’t drink eggnog once (I hate eggnog).
Daniel Jacob Forsythe
When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, I guess they fall in love.
Kate obviously likes a challenge, and Daniel challenges her. Grouchy McGhostie pretends he likes his solitude, but really he’s just punishing himself for betraying the trust of his fiancée Lilly and torturing himself by playing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” over and over again on an out-of-tune piano. At least we know he’s good with his hands (lol).
Mama**** 4 loves to see growth in a man, and while Daniel’s dialogue is extremely stilted at times (I did laugh when he said “It is absolutely not D.J.” about the nickname Kate tries to give him) and he’s a bit arrogant, watching a very handsome ghost find delight in change really tickles me.
At first, Daniel is reticent to reveal anything about himself, and anything learned is wholly against his will. Daniel is reluctant to tell Kate what he was doing before he died, but Walter straight blows his spot up and reveal Daniel was a bootlegger. Kate doesn’t even flinch at this, and we must remember that she is a real estate lawyer and has probably dealt with much worse (lol). Walter also has to explain that Daniel exists as a ghost in the Hollygrove Inn all year round. However, in those two weeks that the inn closes each December, Daniel exists as a living person, able to eat food, play piano, and fireman-carry women out of doors.
Daniel’s bootlegging career apparently means he has baller bartending skills, so when local pub owner Molly challenges him to a bartending competition, he finds himself delightedly accepting. A woman issuing a challenge? He likes this brave new world! He even finds himself envious that women can ask men out over the “special device” (cellular telephone).
And Daniel’s growth gives light to one of my very favorite tropes: the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one. Kate, while hardheaded, is cheerful and upbeat, and watching Daniel begrudgingly come to respect her mystery-solving skills and love of Christmas is adorable.
I acknowledge that the writing and plot makes the literary agent/editor in me die a little inside. The reveal that Daniel is not the only ghost in the inn, something he hadn’t realized in his 95 years there, is just too much to bear. The extremely sudden last-minute deus-ex-machina exposure that Daniel’s rum-running cousin Harry murdered him to protect his own family feels as flimsy as the reveal that Lilly is the one who made it so Daniel could come to life every Christmas in the hopes that he would discover his fate. It’s a plot turn that I hate more than I hate eggnog. And I hate eggnog.
BUT all this fades away when I watch Kate and Daniel decorate the FATTEST Christmas tree I have ever seen. Seriously thick. Daniel remarks “There is a fir tree atop your auto”, a line that his fancy swoopy hair and strong jawline manage to make charming. They flirt adorably, and it the soft lighting is so romantic. This scene is appropriately timed in the movie, not too soon and not too late, where we see how far Daniel has come, from being an irritable, petulant, and mopey bastard to letting his guard down around Kate. He tells Kate that she has a “wonderful capacity for love”, a line that makes me melt, and NOT just because of the way the soft lighting makes his eyes look. They delicately hold hands, and it’s just lovely. They should sing Christmas carols about this.
Daniel comes to care for Kate more and more. He makes her pancakes! He doesn’t want Kate to be scared and watches over her! He cries when he finds out about Lilly’s baby! He admits he’s missed so many things in his self-induced solitude, and he looks at Kate while he says it!
Plus, HE’S SO HANDSOME. OKAY?
Walter and Molly
Two romances for the price of one!
I would have been thrilled just to look at handsome ghost Daniel for 90 straight minutes, but Lifetime also recognizes it serves multiple demographics, and we see romance blossom between innkeeper Walter and pub-owner Molly. They are adorable and actually have some real chemistry. Watching Molly and Walter (Mollter? Wolly?) decorate the inn for a Christmas party is like watching a happily married couple.
It also leads to them purchasing the inn together, and you just know that they throw beautiful Christmas parties together every year.
The Location
The houses they filmed for the Hollygrove Inn have an old charm about them, and there is REAL SNOW! Do you hear me?! I have watched movies where they use loose fluffy snow, cheap looking flocking, and fucking shaving cream. This movie has REAL GODDAMN SNOW, and you cannot take that away from me!
Imagining the Writers Room
I am tickled to tell you that you can see the exact moment the “writers” decided that they didn’t care to write a coherent ending. A friend of mine uses the term “CBA”, which means “can’t be arsed”, and it is a very apt description of what I imagine their attitudes to be. It seems like they decided, en masse, to stop writing and start drinking as soon as they were expected to explain the mystery.
Scribes in the Middle Ages (I know, stay with me) used to spend their days lettering and illuminating manuscripts, backbreaking work. People discovered “marginalia”***** 5 on these documents, a collection of complaints that were scribbled in the margins. If this were the Middle Ages and the writers monks, there would be marginalia saying things like “As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe”, and “Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink” (all real marginalia found in medieval hand-scribed documents!).
It makes me laugh.
Inn Conclusion
In an ideal world, where movies become Films and must convey wisdom or impart something larger than itself, where the viewing experience causes us to grow in some way, the ending would have been profound and tragic. Perhaps Daniel would have departed this mortal coil with Lilly, having learned his fate and found peace with his place. Perhaps Kate would have rediscovered her capacity for love after falling for Daniel, and been able to move forward in a new relationship with a living human being, having learned that she only has to open herself to love. There would be a flash forward to a poignant scene a year in the future, where Kate returns to the inn with her new beau to spend Christmas with Walter and Molly, and she sees smiles knowingly at the Christmas tree, recalling her life-changing encounter with Daniel.
But this is a Lifetime Movie, and lessons are for suckers.
Just hush and enjoy a very handsome ghost. Thank you.
