Hallmark’s ‘Countdown to Christmas’ Review: “When I Think of Christmas”

Sacrifices. When you think of the word, many people think it’s a burden. But for some people sacrifices are what people do because it’s out of love and it’s not a burden. It’s following their own hearts.

Sometimes in life we sacrifice for advancement. Sometimes we sacrifice to take care of others. Sometimes we sacrifice because we know what is best for us. And all too often in life we’ll never know the sacrifices that people make, because the choices that they make are theirs.

But this weeks Sunday night Countdown to Christmas movie, When I Think Of Christmas, showed us a lot about sacrifices and the way that they affect others.

I will be honest with you, I didn’t expect When I Think Of Christmas to really be a lesson in sacrifices and choices. I thought it would be a movie about music, but if I should have learned anything by now, it’s that Hallmark is not as predictable with it’s movies this season. If anything, they’re keeping us on our toes.

Sara has come home for the Christmas holiday, to help her Mom move. She’s downsizing into a condo and Sara is behind this. But when she gets home, she realizes that her Mom hasn’t even started packing. She’s surprised, but not shocked that her Mom hasn’t started.

She may have just gotten home. but from the first night, Sara is ready to partake in the towns annual Christmas festivities. What she didn’t know is that going to the tree lighting ceremony would bring her face to face with her ex, Josh.

The loves that we leave behind can always be a hard thing to face. For Sara and Josh, you can tell that seeing each other is painful. Sara seems more open to the situation, but Josh definitely is not. Seeing Sara looks as thought he’d been stabbed in the heart repeatedly. I actually felt worse for him than anyone.

Sara acts as though she’s okay, even though you can tell she’s not okay. She’s a lawyer,

But pain is this weird thing. It’s a thing that can encompass you or drive you. It’s also something that can hold you back, depending on how well you deal with the vast array of things that you are feeling. Some of us are able to deal with those things better than others.

Josh is making it obvious that he wants nothing to do with Sara. But as life would have it – they remember things differently. Sara and Jake each have looked at their breakup differently, resulting in them both harboring different resentment. There truly are two sides to every story and it’s a matter of how we deal with them.

Josh is back in town to produce the towns annual Christmas concert. It should be easy for them to stay out of each others way, but this is a movie, so we know that’s not possible. Especially when they realtor on the new condo that Sara’s Mom bought is Josh’s uncle and circumstances keep them having to work together.

Sara is insisting that she has a lot of work to do, but yet, every time Josh needs something she is there. The two are trying to keep what is going on in each of their minds to themselves, but as they keep needing to work together for longer periods of time, they can’t. Sara tries to explain why she left, Josh tries to explain why he never answered her.

Time may have passed, but the love and familiarity that these two feel with each other hasn’t. It’s kind of difficult to explain unless you’ve felt it, but with these two you can see it. You can see that the love that they feel for each other is still the strongest thing that they feel.

But as Josh embraces it, Sara wants to run from it. Josh knows that they are both feeling a lot of feelings and he wants to give it another go. Sara, however, wants to, but she won’t admit it. Sara is all about the logic of it all – they live in places, they have separate lives. She will go back to New York and then where will they be?

When the two ended things before, they didn’t communicate. They aren’t communicating well now.

Sara, is analyzing things internally. She wonders if she made the right decision back in the day. She wonders if she made the right choice back in the day. She even goes as far as to insinuate that she did what he parents wanted versus what she did. Her Mom, that’s a lot for her to take.

Her Mom has spent all of Sara’s life pushing her for the stable route, because music wasn’t a sure thing. Sara’s Dad had been a musician and her Mom had to be the one that was always making sure that they survived. She wanted more for Sara, but was it fair for her to push her own fears on Sara?

Sara’s Mom begins to question everything and Sara finds out more about who her Mom was. She was a singer, who gave up her love of performing in order to provide.

Her Mom hadn’t really thought twice about her sacrifices, because to her it wasn’t a sacrifice. It was the love for her daughter. For Sara, she wants to give her Mom back the things that she loves.

While packing she finds a song that her father had written for her Mom. She wants to honor her parents and perform it at the concert with Josh. Only life ends up happening and to her, it becomes too much. She thinks that Josh is trying to push her into music and feelings, but it is what she wants… too. She just won’t allow herself to feel it.

Where Shenae Grimes-Beech and Niall Matter excel in the movie is the rawness of emotions during the scenes that are meant to pull at your heartstrings. They both make you believe that they are feeling every emotion and every bit of self doubt and fear. They both make you believe that this is their story, even though you know it’s not.

When Sara is presented with the knowledge that Josh had invited his agent, she decides not to sing. This is a betrayal to her, she feels that she’s being pushed again. And well, it’s not something that we necessarily understand, but also, don’t really think that it’s something that we could unless we went through all of the emotions that Sara has.

What Josh does though in order to show that he’s sorry – working with her Mom so that she would be the one to perform the song at the show… it’s the most romantic thing. It shows his love for Sara and his understanding of everything that has happened.

Ugh, where can we find one of those.

This is Hallmark, so we know that we’re going to get Josh and Sara back together. This is a movie that doesn’t disappoint. We’re definitely thankful for that Christmas gift.