My favorite time of the year is Christmas season, for one reason and one reason only – Christmas movies. I am not big on Christmas, but there is something about Christmas movies that make me feel hope and forget all of the bad Christmas events of my life.
The Hallmark Channel‘s Countdown to Christmas event began with two of the channels stars- Danica McKellar and Benjamin Ayres. The two make a charismatic pair to grace the screen.
The movie, You, Me, &. The Christmas Trees is about, “Olivia (Danica McKellar) is Connecticut’s resident expert on evergreen trees. Days before Christmas she gets a plea for help from Jack (Benjamin Ayres), a Christmas tree farmer in need of her skills to figure out the mystery illness plaguing his trees. Trees are dying out and ruining his business, which has been his family’s legacy for a century. After calling off her Christmas wedding six months earlier, Olivia isn’t eager to head home for the holidays so she agrees to make a detour and stop at Jack’s farm to examine the trees. Unable to immediately discover the cause, Olivia is determined to get to the root of the problem and extends her stay to run advanced tests. With time to kill while she waits for test results, Olivia joins Jack and his friends at the holiday festivities around town and finds their traditions a welcome change to the reserved holidays she grew up with. As they spend more time together, they begin to fall for each other and Jack helps Olivia reconnect to Christmas, her parents and herself. In the end, her tenacity pays off and Olivia not only devises a way to preserve Jack’s trees but she discovers the shocking truth about why his firs were fizzling.”
I am a sucker for any movie that takes place on a Christmas Tree lot, which is funny because I don’t ever have a Christmas tree. Not a real one anyways. But I love a tree. I feel like they bring hope and togetherness. They bring a joy that we don’t get everywhere in life.
We all have ornaments that mean something. We all have traditions and traditions mean something. For this small town, it’s been this Christmas tree farm. Everyone gets their tree there. But for some reason, the needles keep falling off the tree and Jack can’t figure out why.
Now, I can’t keep a plant alive to save my life. For real – if you’re looking for that to happen, keep on moving. But Olivia, she’s at home amongst plants. She’s an evergreen specialist, and has this deep connection to her love for plants.
I would think that she’s avoiding her family – cancelled wedding and all. But the Connor Family Tree Lot is stumping her. She can’t figure out how to save the trees, it’s stumping her. There is also the point of avoidance, but she is starting to care about Jack and knows what perserving a legacy means to him.
It’s the 100th anniversary of the lighting of the town tree, which has always come from the Connor family farm. He doesn’t want to let his Grandfather and Father down, but what he’s missing is that he won’t. He won’t let them down because he’s done his best. He’s made them proud because he’s grown up to be the man that is driven, filled with love, there for his Mom, and he takes care of his family and community.
Olivia comes up with a plan. She makes a medicine that she thinks will temporarily save the trees while she figures out what is really wrong and save the tradition and the lot for the future.
While waiting, Jack’s family comes over and his Mom’s reminds him that night is her annual party. They are all exchanging gifts and Jack and Olivia get the same gift. The family is really accepting of her. They love seeing the joy that she brings out of Jack and the way she makes him come alive.
But he’s doing the same for her. She’s finding a joy that she didn’t know that she could feel. And the family has reminded her what Christmas could be. Olivia has ideas of what she has wanted, but she doesn’t vocalize it to her family.
Jack’s Mom brings up a good point, she can’t expect them to solve a problem that they don’t know exists.
Olivia and Jack think that they have solved the issues, but they haven’t. The town tree is dying and she is so determined to fix it. She’s so determined to help Jack, but he becomes upset with her when she suggests ways to help him and ways to help the soil. He says that the only thing he cares about is Christmas.
And that destroys Olivia. Jack had told her that she could be honest with him about anything. But Jack is so stubborn and so rude, and he’s trying to live up to a tradition that needs to change. Christmas is important, but Jack has somehow forgotten that the most important thing to his Dad was him. Not Christmas.
His Mom steps in and reminds just what his father would have wanted.
Olivia starts to head out of town, when she runs into her Mom and Dad driving into town. She meets them at the coffee shop and talks to them about what she wants and what she’s always wanted. They listen to her and they have the typical Hallmark heart to heart moment.
When she is set to leave, she hears some of the rival Christmas tree lots friends talking and realizes that Dwayne, the owner, sabotaged the tree.
It’s like any Hallmark movie, where there is something that is going to be the catalyst that leads you back to where you are supposed to be. I love that in these movies, everyone can fall in love so fast. It gives me hope, where I am this cynical bitch, but I can find love if I just find a way to be open to it.
Look, we all have our ways of finding hope.
Olivia is able to tell everyone in the town that Dwayne sabotaged the tree – leading her back to Jack. They both have things that they need to say.
The thing about these moments, the moments where there is a happy ending, I kinda don’t believe in them in real life. I haven’t seen them in real life. So seeing them on television makes me happy. It brings me some sort of happiness to see some people happy.
I love a happy ending. I love seeing that there can be joy in places. I love seeing people in love and finding their happy. After all, isn’t that what we all want out of life. To be happy.
You, Me, & The Christmas Trees was a sweet way to start off Countdown To Christmas, reminding us all of the joy that can be felt during this time. It’s time to start opening our grinchy hearts and letting the season overwhelm us all.