According to IMDb, A Christmas Blessing used to be titled Blessings of Christmas. Blessings of Christmas would have been better, honestly. There are a lot of movies named A Christmas Blessing.

Mandy Gilmore (Lori Loughlin) is leaving her cooking show to travel the world, dining at every Michelin star restaurant. Before she can leave, she has to stop in Milwaukee to sign the deed to her late aunt’s food pantry over to Adam (James Tupper), who owns the business next door. As she is getting ready to sign, she is visited by Otto (Jesse Hutch), who reminds her of her aunt’s seasonal goodwill toward those in need. At the last minute, Mandy tries to get together one last holiday food pantry and feast.

This is on Great American Family, of course. It is a little heavy-handed with the religious overtones but I don’t think they ever blatantly say this is “God’s doing” or whatever. I was waiting for some sort of pun on Otto’s name but, if there is one, I didn’t catch it.

Anyway, it’s a decent enough movie. A little too saccharine for my tastes but I’m sure this is right up the alley for some other people.

Rating: Watch out for the ice!

I’m not sure if I don’t know how towns get their official Christmas trees or if this movie doesn’t know how it happens. Why not both?

Erin (Rochelle Aytes) works at the office of the mayor of Brooklyn, Colorado. When the town’s official Christmas tree plans fall through, Erin finds the perfect tree on the property of a local firefighter, Kevin (Mark Taylor). He doesn’t want to give his tree to the town. So it’s up to Erin to convince him otherwise.

There are so many weird things in this movie. Erin’s father (Peter Bryant) is the mayor of the town, as was his father before him. He keeps saying that it’s Erin’s destiny to be the next mayor…but that’s not how it works. Mayors are elected officials. She doesn’t get to inherit it.

Then there’s this little tidbit they threw in about her professional life. She has a teaching degree. After she graduated, she got a teaching job in Denver. But then her dad offered her a job in the mayor’s office so she decided to give up the Denver job and stay in Brooklyn. WHY. If you didn’t like teaching, why did you finish out the degree? You should have switched majors. If you liked teaching, why did you give up a job? YOU GOT A TEACHING JOB.

I will give props to Hallmark for having people of color as the main characters. There is also a gay couple as side characters. Oh, and let’s not forget the single father adopting an “older” child. (I think they said she was 5 when he adopted her. We’re not talking teenager-older but not-baby-older.) Hallmark isn’t usually known for its diversity. This is a step in the right direction.

Is it a good movie? Not really. Erin kept talking about how Kevin’s house is in the former town square and she kept harassing him to cut down his tree. Why wouldn’t she ask if they could trim the tree where it stood and have the whole event there? Why talk about how historical the site was if only to use that bit of information as the “last minute savior” moment?

Should you watch it? Eh, if you want to. It’s fairly boring. But I would like Hallmark to have more diversity in their movies. I think that if this doesn’t get good ratings, Hallmark will decided that consumers don’t want to see people of color in lead roles. We do. We just want to see them in GOOD roles.