Christmas 2024 Wrap-Up

And now it is time to wrap up the 2024 Christmas season. It felt both hectic and laid back at the same time. I’m not sure how that happened!

This year I watched 74 Christmas movies. That is probably why this season felt more laid back. This was the the lowest number of movies I have watched since I moved from my advent calendar format. 2023 was 92 movies, 2022 was 127, 2021 was 78, and 2020 was 86. I think this is because Hallmark moved some of their new releases to their Hallmark+ streaming service, which I did not subscribe to this year. That cut at least seven movies from the schedule. It was also frustratingly difficult to find new movies this time around. Great American Family continues to change their movies after they have released their schedule. Movies they have announced to air on one date will be replaced by a different movie and air on a different date. It was so frustrating.

Speaking of Great American Family, I am going to cut them from the list of movies next year. While I wanted to continue to watch Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica McKellar, almost all of the movies on the channel are so boring and difficult to sit through. I hope that their 2025 movies don’t turn political but it feels like that is the way the channel is heading.

Since I am going to cut out GAF, I am going to spend more energy trying to find movies on other streaming channels. I didn’t watch anything on Roku, Disney+ (though I did watch one Hulu movie), or Peacock. There was also a locally-made movie released in theaters that I was hoping to go see but I couldn’t make it in time. And, who knows, maybe I will sign up for Hallmark+ this year. We’ll have to wait and see what their streaming-only releases are.

As always, please feel free to let me know if there is a streaming channel that you’d like me to cover. I know there are a million of them out there now. There has to be a channel with some great Christmas movies that I don’t know about.

A Novel Noel | 2024 Christmas Movies

You know, I still hate when the movies on Hallmark Mystery don’t have a mystery in them. A Novel Noel is another non-mystery on the Mystery channel. Why must they do this?

Harper (Julie Gonzalo) is a book editor that has lost her love for her job. When she gets an offer from Sawyer (Brendan Penny) to work at his bookstore in Maine for the month of December, she jumps at the offer. Hopefully, this will help her find her passion again.

I wanted to like A Novel Noel so much. There was so much they could have done to make this an interesting movie. They could have gone deeper into the cute Christmas events the town was running. Or they could have gone deeper into the secret-editor-helping-writers plot. She basically ignored all of the other writers, including the one that inspired her to start the writing group, to solely focus on Sawyer. Blech. Like every other Hallmark Mystery movie, it’s fine. I just wish there was more.

Rating: WHAT DID BETH WRITE?!

A Reason For The Season | 2024 Christmas Movies

Now we’re heading back over to Hallmark Mystery with A Reason For The Season. Is it a mystery? Not really. But I’ve now resigned myself to the knowledge that this is the channel Hallmark uses for all of the non-traditional romance movies. Which is fine.

Thirty-five years ago, Elizabeth Lane (Taylor Reid in the flashback, Sarah-Jane Redmond in the present time) suddenly gave birth to her daughter, Evie (Taylor Cole), in a small town diner with the help of six strangers. Now, realizing that her adult daughter doesn’t appreciate the wealth she has built, Elizabeth sends Evie back to that small town to find the six strangers and grant their Christmas wishes. With the help of Kyle (Kevin McGarry), the only lawyer in town, Evie sets her sights on completing her mother’s challenge.

This is one of those movies that could have gone very wrong. We get a lot of “spoiled rich girl goes good” type of Christmas movies. And a lot of them are bad. Thankfully, I didn’t think A Reason For The Season was that bad. It’s a Hallmark movie so of course there is some terrible dialog and a handful of cheesy acting. But I thought that the actors got the message across well enough.

I suppose, if I had to find something bad with the movie, I would say that it was a little unbelievable that someone with access to THAT much money wouldn’t have gotten a credit card or driver’s license in their fake name instead of pretending they keep forgetting their stuff all over the place. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for Evie to get everything she needed to make herself successful. Especially if she was just giving away $1,000 diamond tennis bracelets. But, to be honest, this is a small nitpick. It was a little annoying that she had to keep hiding her real name but it didn’t ruin the movie. In the end, it was still decent.

Rating: Can I get my Christmas wish granted too?

Five Gold Rings | 2024 Christmas Movies

Woah, Hallmark Mystery has actually given us a mystery movie! Sadly, Five Gold Rings isn’t the type of movie that we, the viewers, can solve along with the characters. But it is a mystery!

As a child, Audrey (Holland Roden) would watch her grandmother return lost items to people during the Christmas season. After her grandmother passed, Audrey was tasked with finding the owners of five gold rings to return the valuable items. Her grandmother insisted that Audrey get help from Finn O’Sullivan (Nolan Gerard Funk), the first person that had a lost item returned. The pair fall in love as they find the owners of the rings.

Five Gold Rings started off as a decent movie. I thought we would get some really good sleuthing. Instead, we keep getting sidetracked with Audrey's failing art career and a grumpy rival shop owner and making Finn’s mother feel better about her art. There was so much going on that wasn’t trying to find the owners of the rings. Obviously, they find all of the owners but it all seemed a lot easier than it should have been. I get why writers think we need useless side plots to keep us entertained but sometimes we don’t really need that. We just need a good story.

Rating: The fifth ring was the lamest story of all.

My Sweet Austrian Holiday | 2024 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I understand how Hallmark chooses which movies are going on the main channel and which are going on the Mystery channel, which was rebranded from Movies & Mysteries. My Sweet Austrian Holiday is on the Mystery channel but there are no mysteries to be found.

Charlotte (Brittany Bristow) runs her family’s chocolate shop in Vienna. Unfortunately, the shop is in danger of closing because a real estate developer wants to buy the location. Little does Charlotte know that her new friend and love interest, Henry (Will Kemp), recently took over that same real estate company. Will Charlotte have to shut down her shop and return to the United States?

Ugh, this was such a terrible movie. Charlotte is a newbie chocolatier. Yet she never makes a single bad chocolate. Everyone raves about every piece that she makes. There are multiple times that she tries out a new recipe and not once does that recipe fail. I hate it.

On top of that, there is nothing interesting between Charlotte and Henry. She only complains and he doesn’t have anything to add at all. I think they may be the most boring couple I have ever seen. Well, until the end when the both magically know how to do a super choreographed waltz. Yeah, this movie is ridiculous. It isn’t worth your time.

Rating: 2020’s Christmas In Vienna is better

This Time Each Year | 2024 Christmas Movies

What do you do when you are Hallmark and you want to have a movie about a very serious subject but you can’t really say the name of the serious subject? Call it This Time Each Year and throw it on the Hallmark Mystery channel. It’s a mystery if you don’t actually say the word, right?

Lauren (Alison Sweeney) and Kevin (Niall Matter) are having marriage troubles. They have been separated for a year but Lauren still hasn’t told her mother. When her mother comes to visit, Lauren asks Kevin to pretend nothing has happened. Will this bring them together or break them farther apart?

This is a movie about alcoholism that doesn’t want to actually be about alcoholism. Kevin was successfully working as a bartender and not drinking when his boss randomly fires him because he doesn’t want to tempt Kevin with holiday parties? Kevin walks everywhere (even though we don’t see that) because he lost his license the year prior, though they don’t ever say how or why he lost his license. (If it was drunk driving, you rarely lose your license in the US after only one instance.) This Time doesn’t want to make Kevin out to be a bad guy. He has to get back with Lauren, after all. But it really is disingenuous to only give him vague alcoholic stereotypes that don’t seem to have any actual consequence.

If you overlook this giant shadow hanging over the movie, it’s still pretty boring. Lauren spends the entire movie feeling bad for herself. One of the big problems they have is a house the couple bought before they split. It’s a gorgeous house that they claim is a money pit but, again, they only give vague things that needed to be fixed in the house. When we actually see various parts of the house, there isn’t anything that seems wrong. I know that you can’t always see the bad parts of a house but they literally named things like “the staircase” and “the roof” but neither needed work. Anyway, Lauren blames herself for buying the house and putting their family in financial strain and it is just so lame. Neither of these people are interesting and the movie neuters the parts it wants to make interesting.

Rating: Just sell the house already

The Cases Of Mystery Lane: Death Is Listening (2024)

I can’t get away from Hallmark. As I was scrolling through Peacock to find something interesting to watch, I came across The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death is Listening. I liked Aimee Garcia in Lucifer so I turned it on. Immediately, I was met with a Hallmark Media production logo. Goddammit.

Birdie (Garcia) and Alden Case (Paul Campbell) are a married couple who love true crime. They have just completed classes in order to become private investigators. When their favorite true crime writer/podcaster, Laurel St. James (Samantha Ferris), gets murdered, officer Ted Newton (Matt Hamilton) brings them in to help find the culprit.

Yeah, this is definitely a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel movie. Unfortunately, when I turned it on, I didn’t realize that this is the second movie in a series. As a result, I was a little confused about some things. Birdie is a lawyer that works for her mom…but she doesn’t seem to actually do any lawyering work. I have no idea what Alden does for a job. We only see him work on robots, which I think they called a hobby? They also seem to talk about relationship problems a lot but we never actually see any relationship problems. It makes no sense.

As for the story…it’s fine. Like a lot of Hallmark movies, things magically fall into place and there are no consequences when they accuse the wrong person of the murder. But it’s kitschy and cute, right? Eh, sorta. The acting is fine but the characters are weird. Alden finds a mouse in the house, which freaks him out A LOT. But instead of letting the exterminator that Birdie hired in to take care of the problem, he elects to try to build robots to take care of it? Birdie goes into her lawyer office and talks to her lawyer mother but then spends all of her time learning how to pick locks? I really don’t understand what world these two live in.

I think I am going to try to track down the first movie in the series to see if it explains anything. It was only released last year so I’m not sure how successful I will be in finding it. Sometimes Hallmark likes to hide their older movies. Until then, I can only recommend this movie as a decent turn-your-brain-off movie. Garcia is cute as Birdie and Campbell is…well…slightly annoying as Alden. But together they somehow manage to get the job done.

Rating: C

A Scottish Love Scheme (2024)

Hallmark must really have a thing for Scotland now. In 2021, there was A Castle For Christmas. 2023 was A Merry Scottish Christmas. And now they gave us A Scottish Love Scheme. How many Hallmark movies can Scotland handle?

Lily (Erica Durance) has recently left her job marketing for a family brewery. Now she has time to take a mother-daughter trip to Scotland with her mom, Cait (Jo Cameron Brown), to visit their friends, the Campbells. While they are there, Cait schemes with her old friend, Mairi (Juliet Cadzow), to set Lily up with Mairi’s son, Logan (Jordan Young).

For a movie that claims to be about schemes, there isn’t a lot of scheming going on. Unless you want to count Mairi telling Logan that he should take Lily to dinner at a specific restaurant a “scheme.” I think schemes are supposed to be kinda secret, right? With the exception of one instance toward the beginning of the movie, Cait and Mairi must think their kids are pretty stupid to not realize what they are doing. Then again, Lily and Logan never say anything about it so maybe they are stupid…

If we look beyond the unschemey schemes, the rest of the movie is just fine. A little boring, as usual, but there is nothing particularly offensive about it. Everything just takes a very long time to happen. I would have liked it a little more if Cait and Mairi were a little more sneaky about what they were doing. Maybe make this a bit more of a mystery romance instead. Well, at least we got some really pretty shots of Scotland.

Rating: B-

Christmas 2023 Wrap-Up | 2023 Christmas Movies

I know you have been looking forward to my 2023 Wrap-Up post. Well, wait no longer. Here are the details!

In 2023, I watched 92 Christmas movies. While this is still more than the 78 movies I watched in 2021, it is a LOT less than the 127 movies I watched last year.

I did banish the terrible UPtv movies from the lineup but I ended up keeping Great American Family. I still don’t feel great watching the channel. It just feels wrong to not include the Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar movies. And if I have the channel for those two, I might as well watch the other 18 movies they aired, right? Thankfully, the MyPillow and Gilmore Girls commercials were absent this year. I’d like to drop the channel next year but that probably won’t happen. Maybe I can find a way to watch it without actually contributing financially to the channel.

Besides GAF, I also covered movies aired on Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime/Video/Freevee, Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock. Sadly, I didn’t even check Discovery to see what they offered. I forgot all about it. Maybe their Christmas offerings will still be around in July and I can revisit them.

Plans for 2024? I like the number of movies I covered this year. I will try my best to keep the number of movies around 92. However, I would like to figure out how to get a better list of all of the Christmas movies airing each year. GAF really likes to change their schedule mid-season so that is unavoidable but I didn’t find out about some of the Amazon movies until the middle of December. Having a full schedule would make it easier to get a good handle on my review schedule.

Is there anything you would like me to add or subtract for next year? Is there a channel that you think I should watch? Do you think I should continue watching Great American Family? Leave me a comment and let me know. I need as much help as I can get!

Miracle In Bethlehem PA | 2023 Christmas Movies

I live about an hour from Bethlehem, PA. When I saw that there was a Christmas movie called Miracle In Bethlehem, PA, I was intrigued. It wasn’t actually filmed in Bethlehem, of course. It was filmed in Canada. Ah well.

Mary Ann (Laura Vandervoort) is a lawyer who is waiting to adopt a baby. After months of waiting, a baby in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania becomes available. Mary Ann drives to pick her up but gets stranded in Bethlehem due to a severe snowstorm. With no room in any of the local hotels, the new mom and her baby end up staying with Joe (Benjamin Ayres), a mechanic who has lost direction in his life since his father’s death.

While I understand that this movie was supposed to be an analog to the story of Jesus, it was a little offensive that a white woman so intent on adoption was insisting on adopting a baby. There are a lot of children in the system and, as they get older, it’s harder and harder for them to get adopted because people only want to adopt babies. Maybe we don’t normalize only adopting babies.

Obviously, since this is the story of Jesus, it is very heavy handed with its use of God and church. It’s a little annoying but, considering Jesus was the point of the movie, it’s understandable. It does make it a little less appealing to certain demographics though. Or maybe this was Hallmark’s way of saying they haven’t completely dumped God for LGBTQ+ stories.

Rating: At least it’s not a manger