Christmas Joy

Christmas Joy (2018) - Hallmark

By Lisa Sue 

Get it? The movie is called Christmas Joy and our heroine is named Joy! Take a shot! It has been a minute since I scored against the Christmas drinking game. But let’s take a gander- dead relative, check. Joy is some market researcher from the big city of Washington DC who comes home to North Carolina for the holidays to help her Aunt who is convalescing. This is the same Aunt who raised her because…drum roll…Joy’s mom is dead. I didn’t pay enough attention to understand exact nature of the Aunt’s ailment. I also can’t state if fake Christmas trees were dissed, however considering their Cookie Crawl theme is Mother Nature I presume the hate of fake trees is implied, if not explicitly said. Now this town (if you can recall the town name, please reply) is all about Christmas traditions. It has not only a gingerbread contest BUT it also has a cookie crawl! And for someone who spent the last couple of years of high school in this town, one would have thought Joy would be better informed. Not to mention her Aunt seems to be the co-chair of the Cookie Crawl so why the rules and regulations of the contest are new and surprising to Joy is…shocking. But these movies don’t invite a lot of questions so I will move on.

Regarding the hot chocolate, well this movie provides a twist. What will improve your hot chocolate? A shot of habanero (exactly which pepper escapes the memory), which is a nice connection to her dead mother because as a child that’s how her mom would make hot chocolate. Now as an adult, I get the chocolate with a bit of heat combination is good. I can’t imagine spicy is what children want though with hot chocolate, they’re more of the “more marshmallow” contingent. Regarding baking cookies, there is literally nothing but baking cookies in this movie as the big event is the Cookie Crawl. What is a cookie crawl you ask? I can say it is self-evident, I feel the answer is going from home to home and eating Christmas cookies. But then why so many cookies at one house? And one can question why you need a theme for a cookie crawl- the theme is Christmas people! Always Christmas! They’re cookies, I feel a theme takes away from their sugary goodness. I would totally dig a tropical snow theme or whatever nontraditional themes that Joy was pushing. I clearly need to take better notes when these are playing in the background, obviously there are a few gaps in the plot on my end.

But while I may not recall the town name, who won the gingerbread contest, or if Jingle Bells played, I do know the most important thing of all- how it ends. Earlier on in the movie a precious green ornament that belonged to Joy’s mom falls and breaks. The grand gesture isn’t to replace it, but Ben takes the broken pieces and creates a new ornament out of them. Neither ornament is winning any awards and isn’t finial d'arbre quality (thank you Christmas At The Plaza) but it is the thought that counts. The ornament Ben creates is made with such care and love that Joy realizes how Ben really feels, even if he didn’t say anything. The breakup in this one is soft and comes as a shock to Joy who doesn’t understand why Ben drove all the way to her big Christmas party in DC only to then abruptly leave without seeing her. As the comedy of errors ensues, Ben avoids her calls which is a shame because while the gingerbread contest is done the Cookie Crawl is just starting. Aunt is overjoyed with the Mother Nature theme, and it seems that Ben (Mr. Christmas) washes his hand of the Cookie Crawl, but naturally that letdown is overlooked.  Joy decides to not to stay in DC, since her heart wasn’t 100% in the job anymore. Instead come the new year she gets to work for one of her old clients who’s dumped Joy’s original marketing firm and doing the analysis inhouse in North Carolina, near this small snowy town. What are the odds? Career back on track, the misunderstanding sorted, Ben and Joy can now live happily ever after amongst the snow, the ice skating, and the peaceful woods happily ever after. Till the next holiday season when they must beat the theme of Mother Nature. Good luck topping that.


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