433. Christmas Movie Magic

Nora loves a lot of things, but chief among them is holidays movies — the tackier the better. But not everyone can just sit back and enjoy the absurdity.

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I’m Nora McInerny, and It’s Going To Be OK.

And today, I have a cure for whatever holiday blues might be ailing you.

I have a cure for some of the holiday blues that have sometimes ailed me and the people I love and will probably ail me again, because there is just something about this season that brings out my inner sad girl. And that cure is Christmas movies.

Not good Christmas movies, not classics. There is a time and a place for Home Alone or Christmas Story or Miracle on 34th. What street was the miracle on?

Whatever Christmas movie makes you truly feel festive, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something else entirely. A genre of holiday movie that goes from a writer’s brain directly to the TV screen, no edits.

A movie that is made in a matter of days.

Something that takes place, for whatever reason, always in a small town where a high-powered businesswoman has to return to her roots and fall in love with like a butcher, a mechanic, a farmer, a guy with rough hands and a soft heart.

Something with a very clear narrative arc. An arc that goes, things are mostly OK but could be better. Then they get slightly worse but not that bad.

And then it’s all really good at the end. These are not movies that require your full attention. And in fact, it is best if you are not paying full attention to them.

But they are movies that are movies, legally speaking, that you can’t deny they are movies. I start with these movies. As soon as they are back up on Netflix or Hulu or whatever streaming platform they are on and I don’t stop until Christmas Day.

And the kids know if I sit down on the couch, we are checking another movie off our list. And yes, there is an actual list on our fridge of Christmas movies.

And if you do not believe in the possibility that these could make you feel better, let me read you some of the descriptions of a few of my favorite movies. The Princess Switch starring Vanessa Hudgens.

Competing in a Christmas baking competition in Belgravia, a Chicago baker bumps into the princess fiance who looks just like her. They switch lives for two days.

First of all, so much more happens in that movie, including the line, I guess we’re going to Belgravia. I’d love that movie, truly. A Castle for Christmas starring Brooke Shields.

To escape a scandal, a best-selling author journeys to Scotland, where she falls in love with a castle and faces off with the grumpy duke who owns it. Again, so much more unfolds in that, but it is worth it just for a glimpse of Brooke Shields’ hair.

The Night Before Christmas, that’s Night with a K, also starring Vanessa Hudgens, our Christmas queen.

A medieval English knight is magically transported to present-day America, where he falls for a high school science teacher who is disillusioned by love.

The magic of these movies is that they are all kind of the same movie, and they are all so wonderfully forgettable that you can watch them every year and not even remember what happens.

I had to look up the descriptions of these movies, and I’ve seen each of them multiple times.

The magic of any movie is, of course, that it gives you a break from wherever you are and whatever you’re going through, unless this is where the episode takes a plot twist of its own.

You are a person who cannot relax and has to notice errors in these movies and type them up on IMDb. Errors that I will now share with you and warning, this contains spoilers for Christmas movies that are several years old.

Errors in The Princess Switch.

Again, a movie where a Chicago baker is competing in a Christmas baking competition in Belgravia and switches places with her doppelganger who happens to be the princess fiancé who would eventually obviously be a princess. OK.

When Edward and Stacey cut the wedding cake, everyone claps. Spoiler, sorry. The right camera shot shows Kevin using his right arm to hug Olivia while she claps and holding Margaret’s flowers in his left.

The immediate left camera shot shows Kevin’s hands empty and clapping vigorously while Margaret holds the flowers in her left hand. Well, you got them there.

While shopping at Frederick’s Toy Store, the color of the alien toy gun in Stacey’s left hand changes blue to red and back to blue. And this is my favorite one. In Chicago, the kindly old man is standing next to a red donation kettle on a tripod.

Both the kettle and the tripod are covered in snow, but the man collecting money does not have any snow anywhere on himself, not even on his shoes.

Donation kettles are never left out alone, and even if he took over from another attendant, he would have walked through a sidewalk of snow and picked up snow on his shoes.

OK, errors in A Castle for Christmas When Miles asks the barman for a whiskey and tells him to leave the bottle, under Scottish legislation relating to alcohol, he would not be allowed to be given the bottle.

As the bar is a licensed premises, they can only serve spirits in 25 ml measures or multiples thereof, and giving Miles the bottle would go against this.

Furthermore, depending on what the operating plan says on the premises license, they probably wouldn’t be allowed to give him a glass bottle either. OK.

As an environmental engineer, the Duke would probably know that pine trees cannot be planted in December in the Scottish climate. OK. All right.

We’re watching different movies, is what this is telling me. Finally, errors in The Night Before Christmas.

Again, a movie where a medieval English knight is magically transported to present-day America, where he falls for a high school science teacher who is disillusioned by love. At 524 minutes in the movie, the knight meets an old woman and says hello.

The word hello was introduced in 1827, whereas the scene is from 1334. So, by that time, the hello word was not introduced, OK? Sir Cole shows up in 2019 Ohio from 1334 Norwich.

The problem is that he would be speaking middle English while she would be a native speaker of the 21st century American English. The two languages, while related, would be mutually unintelligible without considerable exposure or training.

When Sir Cole sees Brooke with the red dress, he says she looks positively radiant. The word radiant was introduced around 1600. No way he could have known it in the 1300s.

This is a movie about a knight jumping centuries.

Honestly, the magic of these movies is actually that some of us just love them, and some of us are watching closely enough to critique the language used by a 14th century knight who is trying to fall in love with a 21st century high school teacher

who’s been disillusioned by love. So that’s the magic of Christmas movies. Either you love them or you love to hate them enough that you’re going to pick them apart and post about it on the Internet.

It’s Going To Be OK is a promise, but the it changes every day. And it is different for all of us, and we will be here every weekday, bringing you something OK. We are an independent podcast, so thank you for being here.

Thank you for sharing it with your friends, for rating and reviewing it. It’s Going To Be OK is a production of Feelings and Co, purveyor of a plethora of feelings since, I think, 2022.

Our team is Marcel Malekebu, Claire McInerny, Megan Palmer, Michelle Plantin and Grace Barry. This episode was produced by Megan Palmer, I’m pretty sure, and mixed by Amanda Romani. Our theme music is by Secret Audio.