While I want to say that Last Christmas (2019) is one of those titles that is readily findable amongst other holiday appropriate films, in its totality you will note there is something more familiar about it.  With the first part of that last sentence, I am referring to how so many Christmas movies these days trade on people’s desire to watch material related to Yuletide culture without actually being about anything having to do with the birth of Jesus.  This is becoming an aggravatingly repeated complaint on my part.  I have also likely not made myself clear to this point.  If you go to this flick’s International Movie Database (IMDb) page, you will see a movie poster with the tagline, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta have faith.”  I am not sure how this describes the movie.  At the same time, you will see the characters behaving in a manner that is more Christian than a number of their cinematic cousins in other films.  After I finished watching it, it had me wondering what I saw instead of this when it came out?

To answer that question, it was Doctor Sleep (2019).  I should have seen Last Christmas, especially since it starts in a church.  That place of worship is in Yugoslavia in 1999, and young Katarina Andrich (Madison Ingoldsby) is part of a chorus giving a Christmas concert.  If you know your history, then you are aware that this is not a good place or time to be.  I mean Yugoslavia, of course.  A church is a great place to be at any moment in your life.  As a result of the upheaval that is about to break out in this Balkan country, the Andrich family relocates to London, England.  Some twenty years later, Katarina, now going by Kate (Emilia Clarke), is up to a lot of behavior that would make her mother, Petra Andrich (Emma Thompson), less proud than the day of that concert in their native Croatia.  She hooks up with random guys, is apparently homeless, and cares more about making auditions to advance her acting/singing career than making amends with her family.  This is demonstrated when her sister, Marta Andrich (Lydia Leonard), comes to Kate’s place of employment to ask for help with their domineering mother.  Marta does not want to deal with her mom because the eldest daughter has yet to reveal her homosexuality.  Kate is noncommittal, and is equally flippant with her boss, Santa (Michelle Yeoh).  Kate does not work in the North Pole, by the way, but rather for a Chinese woman named Huang Qing Shin who is so enthusiastic about Christmas that she opened a shop selling holiday appropriate decorations and ornaments, and calling herself Santa.  Amidst Kate’s challenges in keeping steady housing, squabbles with her boss and family, and failing her auditions, she meets Tom Webster (Henry Golding).  He hangs out in front of Santa’s store apparently interested in her.  In their first interaction, he gets her to look up and see things she has never seen before, like the rare bird perched outside that promptly poops in her eye.  Despite this inauspicious introduction, he keeps randomly showing up in places where she is, and offers simply to take a walk with her.  His simplicity and the fact that he seems to notice things others do not intrigues her, and it leaves her wanting to see more of him.  Unfortunately, he cannot give her his phone number because he does not carry a mobile with him.  He has one, but he says he keeps in a cupboard in his apartment.  It does make it more difficult for her to find him.  At one point, he suggests that he volunteers with St. Benedict’s homeless shelter.  Yet, when she goes to find him there, nobody seems to have heard of him, though the manager explains that Tom Webster could be somebody that comes in at a time when he is not working.  Regardless of his inconsistency, hanging around him starts to have an effect on Kate.  In this spirit, one of the first thing she does is to have her dad, Ivan Andrich (Boris Isakovic), drive her home to mom.  Though Petra is overbearing as ever, at least now Kate has a place to sleep.  Kate must also make amends with Santa, particularly after she left the store open in her rush to make an audition and the business is robbed.  Further, Santa makes it look like a break-in order to cover for Kate and so she can receive the insurance money.  Kate makes it up to her boss by getting the man Santa refers to as “The Boy” (Peter Mygind) to ask out Santa.  Next is Marta, who Kate had embarrassed in front of their parents by outing Marta’s sexual preferences.  Finally, she begins working more with those who rely on St. Benedict’s for help.  In between, she begins going days without seeing Tom.  It remains a difficulty, especially after they share a special night when she reveals the sickness she had that is a source of tension.  I will discuss this further in the next paragraph.  When she finally sees him again, she lets it be known that she wants a relationship, but he says that he cannot be relied upon.  This is sad news, but she carries on turning her life around.  With a big upcoming benefit she is putting on at St. Benedict’s, she returns to his tiny flat to talk to him one more time.  This is when she learns that he has been dead since, well, last Christmas.  In other words, she had been interacting with a ghost, but one connected to her because he carries his transplanted heart, the result of her having a heart condition and him suddenly dying in a bicycling accident.  Again, I will explore this in greater detail in a moment.  They have one last conversation, for lack of a better word, where he admonishes her to look after his heart.  We then get to see the talent show she organizes for the homeless, having finally learned that it is more important to give than receive.

My summary of the lesson learned by Kate in Last Christmas is based on Acts 20:35, which quotes Jesus as saying “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  It is a wonderful reminder for this Christmas season.  It is also symbolic for Kate.  One of the things she says to Tom, even if it is not really Tom, is that since she had the heart transplant, she has felt like a different person.  The movie intimates that this event changed her, making her act more selfishly.  It is not until she gets in touch with her heart, essentially, that she sees the blessing she has been given.  Elsewhere in the Bible, specifically Ezekiel 36:26, it says “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”  This scripture is a fitting metaphor for a literal heart transplant, which is made all the more apropos given the transformation Kate undergoes.  Early on, she clearly has a heart of stone.  She is set in her ways regarding her lifestyle and completely against reconciling with her family.  While the Catholic Church does not support the idea of ghosts, one can alternatively say that she receives a new spirit with Tom’s guidance.  To this end, he tells her that every action can make or unmake a character.  Her self-destructive behavior had been doing a lot of unmaking, causing family and friends to turn their backs on her.  It is not until she starts living for others does she have any glimmer of happiness.  This is also a good notion to keep in your heart and mind for Christmas.  The holiday is not about receiving but giving.  The blessings you bring to others is the best gift, which is why this coincides with Jesus’ birth.

I think I can safely say that Last Christmas has been the best of the Christmas films I have seen this year.  I thought it was a Netflix film, despite me viewing it on Amazon Prime.  It is free on that streaming service by the way.  Do not make the same mistake I did in the Fall of 2019 when I watched Doctor Sleep instead of Last Christmas.  Indeed, until I see something better between now and the end of this seasonally appropriate run, I would say watch it before any other.