Having grown tired of the Christmas filler to be found on Netflix, I decided to do some searching on Amazon Prime.  One of the advantages of that platform is that often (but not always) if there is a title they do not have available for free, you can rent it.  I am willing to pay a couple bucks occasionally for the convenience of not having to sit through another A Boy Called Christmas (2021).  While I did not necessarily hate the experience of watching that, I also have a feeling that it is, perhaps, among the best Netflix has to offer.  Put differently, I did a lot of scrolling.  However, on Amazon Prime, I found Four Christmases (2008) relatively quickly.  There were some other credible selections, many of which I have already covered.  What made this one stand out was the fact that it has Reese Witherspoon in it, along with a fellow Chicagoan, Vince Vaughn.  Not long into its runtime, I realized that I had seen this in the theater.  There is nothing spectacularly original here, which is probably why I did not remember it, but it did get me thinking about so-called seasonally appropriate movies.  Come along with me as I explore this idea.

While Bradford “Brad” McVie (Vince Vaughn) and Kate Kinkaid (Reese Witherspoon) are just two people, they are about to have Four Christmases.  You will see why this is the case as we proceed.  For now, they are two people supposedly in love.  They role play at a bar, and carry on an adult relationship in every sense of the word, including living together, though they are not married.  This is not square Catholic guy here being snarky, but rather an accurate description of their marital status, and important to the plot.  We meet them during the Christmas season at the already mentioned locale before they go back to their apartment to fantasize about their upcoming holiday trip.  They go to a different country this time of the year every turn of the calendar in order to avoid their families.  The awfulness of these domestic arrangements is driven home for them at an office Christmas party where Brad’s co-workers complain about their situations.  Feeling even better about their decision, they are frustrated, to say the least, when San Francisco’s legendary fog grounds all planes that day.  The logical choice would be to wait until the weather clears, but they are surprised when a reporter for a local news station commences an impromptu interview with the pair of vacationers.  The fact that they are not going to help sick children in Burma is broadcast to their four families, and soon their phones are ringing.  By “four families,” I mean that each of their parents are divorced with separate lives.  With their silly façade ruined, it is time to make the rounds, and it will be their first visit with the people that raised them in years.  The first stop is Howard McVie (Robert Duvall), Brad’s father.  He lives as close to a rustic (my kinder word) lifestyle as sone can get in the Bay Area.  Brad also has two brothers that live close to the poverty line, apparently, and thus the expensive gifts he and Kate get his nephews is seen as poor taste, even though was not aware of a rule.  This along with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) moves his siblings put on him, and finally falling off the roof attempting to install a satellite dish for his father, convince them to leave as soon as possible.  They get in the car, but not without discovering new things about each other, particularly the fact that Brad’s given name is Orlando, a fact he never revealed.  Their next stop is Kate’s mom, Marilyn Kinkaid (Mary Steenburgen).  In the midst of more revelatory antics, Kate decides to take a pregnancy test she finds in her sister Courtney’s (Kristin Chenoweth) baby bag.  Though it comes back negative, Kate is determined to get it back from her thieving niece, braving the childhood trauma of a bouncy house to retrieve it.  As she struggles with a mob of children, Brad is learning about other aspects of her awkward early years.  It gets worse when Marilyn insists that Brad and Kate come with them to church to see her new boyfriend, Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam), preach.  Instead, Brad and Kate are, as the expression goes, “volun-told” to fill in for Joseph and Mary in the church’s pageant.  He hams it up while she gets questioning glances when she cannot swaddle the live baby playing Jesus.  It is then on to Paula’s (Sissy Spacek), Brad’s mother.  She seems normal enough until it is revealed that she is dating Darryl (Patrick Van Horn), Brad’s childhood friend.  Already agitated, Brad and Kate do horribly in a game of Taboo, which reveals that they do not know each other as well as they think.  Given everything else that has happened, especially seeing their brothers and sisters with their own kids, not to mention a potential pregnancy, has Kate rethinking her stance on not getting married or starting a family.  When she brings this up to Brad while on their way to Creighton Kinkaid’s (Jon Voight), Kate’s father, house, she is met with resistance from Brad.  Thus, she asks that she be dropped off by herself, while Brad goes to see his dad. While there, he tells Howard that he had rebuffed Kate’s desire for a more serious relationship.  Howard is proud of his son, saying that women are too much trouble and adding that despite not being into the same things, the two are alike.  This is enough to convince Brad to have a change of heart on the matter, and he goes to Creighton’s house to ask for forgiveness.  As to taking things further between them, he admits that he is now open to it, stating that there are some advantages he had not thought of before, but not making any definite commitments.  Nonetheless, a year later they are in the hospital with a new baby, one they had not told their families about, until a reporter comes in to ask them how they feel about having the first newborn of the year.

What is it about my description of Four Christmases in the previous paragraph makes it sound like a Christmas movie?  It has the holiday in the title, but outside of the play at the church, where is the connection to this important day for Christians?  A non-Christian might watch this and say, well, they are gathering with their families and doing all the typical activities associated with the holiday.  There are Christmas trees, presents, and a feast with a turkey and all the trimmings.  With apologies, these are all ancillary to the actual reason for why we celebrate this day at all.  Still, by this logic, none of these so-called Christmas films are worthy of being found using that word in a search engine.  There are a few exceptions out there, but, unfortunately, the It’s a Wonderful Life’s (1946) of the world are few and far between.  Even that classic does not speak specifically to the birth of Jesus, instead having a vague notion of the existence of God and how He can intervene in our lives to guide us onto the right path.  God is nowhere to be found in Four Christmases despite having a scene inside a church.  Besides being a protestant building, and thus not having a tabernacle, the entire sequence is played for laughs.  I have not been to too many protestant services, but the ones I have been to have not introduced the pastor with the “Hey Song” played at Chicago Bulls games.  Look it up and you will probably recognize it.  Again, I get it, I am probably looking in the wrong place for a Christian message in a movie of this ilk, despite having the name of a Holy Day of Obligation in the title.  In fairness, I will applaud Kate for finally recognizing the error of her ways.  Love, according to Church teaching, is something more than two adult playing house.  It is just that this film underscored more clearly how mislabeled are these movies.

Indeed, as a practicing Catholic, I would be more favorable with calling Four Christmases a romantic comedy, instead of being able to find it with other Christmas movies.  Then again, a film can fall into more than one category.  It is as standard of a romantic comedy as one will see, and there is nothing too wrong with it other than some mild inappropriateness.  Still, I would rather not see it when I search for “Christmas movies” on Amazon Prime.