Normally, I am not one for anything that involves singing. Maybe it is because I can’t sing and maybe it’s because I am really particular when it comes to my carols – the world may never know. But, if you were my shrink and I was speaking to you about it, I would tell you it’s because carols remind me of being a kid and having to go back and forth between my parents for Christmas.
Yes, I am a grown ass adult and that still gets to me. It doesn’t change.
But that doesn’t mean that everything stays stuck in time and nothing changes.
As we get older, things do change. Life moves forward and we all are left with the need to be something more than we were. Our dreams change and evolve, but there is something that keeps us chasing the times in our life where we were the happiest.
For Darcy, she was a one hit wonder. She has been chasing the dream to make it big again her whole life. It didn’t matter that she lost her agent, that no one younger than the age of 40 seems to know who she is. She’s Darcy and she believes in herself.
And that’s admirable.
And somehow she needs to find a way to remember what is important. That lesson isn’t an easy one to learn.
Look, I am not a big believer in all roads lead you home, but that’s the thing about Hallmark. It’s not always about what you believe, it’s about learning about something beyond your point of view. In these movies they always go home and though I have yet to take that plunge, I am open to watching all the movies about it.
Darcy heads back to Dayton, Ohio to see her sister and niece. It’s Christmas time and she has nothing going on, but she does miss her family. From the moment that she sets her foot inside the state lines. Part of me thinks that it’s because she got off the island of Manhattan, but that’s just a personal feeling.
Maybe it’s that when you go home you’re allowed to just be yourself and no one judges you for that. They know you. Darcy doesn’t have to be the singer that traveled the world, she just needs to be the good sister and good aunt.
And she does just that. Especially when her niece got cut off at an audition for the schools caroling group.
You don’t mess with family.
She goes to confront the choir master, who turns out to be her old rival. Adam’s a cutie, but he’s also just a pain in the ass. Rivals in high school stick with you, I guess. These two trade barbs and something is ignited in Darcy, but I think that is mostly because her niece is hurting.
The thing about having nieces and nephews – being an aunt – is that you find yourself wanting to protect them just as you would protect your own child. For Darcy, seeing her niece cry was too much for her, so she decides that she’s going to make her own choir group with all of the kids that were rejected from the group, Herald Angels.
The Herald Angels have been award winning for the school. But the by laws of the competition state if there are more than two groups – the school can decide who to send. Darcy and Adam are at war because he messed with the wrong person – her niece.
Darcy thinks that she’s bitten off more than she can chew, until she hears her niece singing. She’s got an amazing voice – she’s just afraid to sing in front of people. But when Darcy brings the music out of her and her friends, it’s beautiful.
I am hoping the kids in my life never read this, because what they will find is that I have realized that a large percentage of the time, kids are right. They see things that we do not see. They feel things that we do not see.
And these kids see that they would work better together. The two teams are each unique and they are able to come together to learn from each other. The people who may be learning the most though are Darcy and Adam. It’s kind of a funny thing – how hindsight is 20/20 and they are able to see that if they just were able to look past their past they’d see that they have more in common than they don’t.
It’s nice to see the natural evolution between Darcy and Adam, because the two of them could be any of us. Holding on to jealousy, the past, and everything else that could block a person from moving on. But these two – they are learning from the kids around them. They are learning that life is more what you make of it than what you hold onto.
In the midst of all of this, Darcy gets a phone call for a record deal. She needs to return to New York to perform for the head of the record label. This means though, that she will miss the kids concert. It means that she’ll be leaving Adam. Though they are all supportive, there isn’t a one of them that won’t miss her.
We all know that Darcy will make it to New York and she’ll want to go back to Dayton – because these kids have changed her. I feel like Adam is just icing on the cake. Darcy found a home and that is the most beautiful thing of all.
Finding a home, finding the place where you belong is something that we don’t always get in our lives. A lot of the time it’s the one thing that is missing in our lives. We spend our lives wandering, looking for where we belong, but always coming up short.
We do however, if we’re lucky eventually find where we belong.
Darcy and Adam did and well, that’s the Christmas magic of it all.
