My initial guess that Christmas in Mississippi (2017) is a Hallmark Channel movie turned out not to be correct, but I was close.  It is a Lifetime film, but it is one that can be found on Amazon Prime, in case any of what I am about to say interests you.  It seems to be the result of making Sweet Home Alabama (2002) into a holiday flick.  Unlike its cinematic cousin, Christmas in Mississippi has about a billion times more schmaltz, give or take a few million.  What they share is the fact that they are romantic comedies, and they feature a character returning home to reunite with somebody they dated.  The fact that the latter is set during Christmas, similar to so many of its ilk, is incidental.  With that said, please take any snarky-ness that follows as a function of the fact that I have seen this movie before, not literally, but in every conceivable, metaphorical manner.

Holly Logan (Jana Kramer) has decided to spend Christmas in Mississippi, the city of Gulfport to be precise.  This is her choice because it is her home town, not the result of an accident.  Not long into her visit, she encounters her ex-boyfriend, Mike (Wes Brown), and they get back together on Christmas Eve.  The end.  Please forgive me, but it is painfully obvious from the moment they see each other that this is going to be the outcome.  Still, I suppose I will stick to my usual modus operandi for writing these reviews and tell you how we get to that point.  It is her first time returning home for the holiday in years, the result of going away for college and beginning her career as a photographer.  Though her mother, Caroline Logan (Faith Ford), had arranged to pick her up from the airport, Holly decides to get there early and photograph the town before getting to her mom’s place.  While walking around town, she finds a stuffed reindeer and decides to take it home.  Once there, Caroline poses with the toy so that Holly can post it on the internet in hopes that its owner would contact her.  Aside from assisting with lost items, Holly volunteers to go with Caroline to take lunches to those putting up the decorations for Gulfport’s Christmas lights festival.  It is while doing this charitable act that Holly and Mike run into each other.  Despite the time that has passed, she still has not forgiven him for not following her to college as he had promised. The excuse he later gives is that, at the time, he did not know what he wanted out of life.  For now, Holly does not care much to interact with Mike.  This proves unavoidable, though, as he is currently working for the city as the event coordinator, which means that he is in charge of making the aforementioned festival a reality.  Because Caroline is playing such a large role in these preparations, so too does Holly.  Still, Holly remains wary of Mike, seeing a number of behaviors about which she makes a series of wrong assumptions.  The first involves Jack (Trace Masters), a young boy that is also helping out the upcoming event.  Seeing the way the kid interacts with Mike, she believes that Jack is Mike’s son.  This gets complicated when Holly sees Mike with Betty (Karina Willis), thinking they are a couple.  At first, this is not a problem, and relations between Holly and Mike reach a truce.  Any goodwill garnered is dashed when he asks her to dinner.  Based on the information just mentioned, she is taken aback and rejects him.  Upon getting home, Holly finds Betty in the kitchen with Caroline, Betty gushing about her recent engagement and wanting Holly to shoot her wedding.  Holly is flattered but turns it down because, as she tells Betty, Mike has just made a pass at her.  Betty laughs off this idea, saying that she is marrying Benny (Roger J. Timber).  Also, Jack is not Mike’s son, but rather his nephew, the kid being watched by his uncle while dad is serving in the Armed Forces.  Since Jack is lending a hand to Holly, the boy ends up being the vehicle for bringing our former lovers together.  She agrees to go to Jack’s house, where Mike is staying while he watches his nephew, for dinner.  This leads to more interactions between the two, like a formal date, and then dinner at Caroline’s house.  It is all, as I said at the beginning of the paragraph, crystal clear what is happening.  Still, there is one potential snag.  As all this is unfolding, Holly is learning that she is being considered for a major promotion, working as a photography editor for a lifestyle magazine in Los Angeles.  In order to get it, she needs to fly away on Christmas Eve in order to be in person to meet the publication that could potentially hire her.  This would mean missing the festival.  Mike is a growing reason to stay.  The other is seeing the impact that the pictures she took of storm victims from years previous that are displayed around town.  Finally, on the way to the airport, she gets a claimant for the stuffed reindeer.  It turns out to be the granddaughter of a resort owner, Carter Greenside (Gary Grubbs), whose establishment has helped to save the town.  Hearing him talk about his passion for Gulfport underscores how much she feels the same.  The fact that she is still in love with Mike does not hurt.  Thus, she skips out on advancing her career to stay, making it in time for the festival.  The last scene takes place a year later when we see Mike propose to Holly.

Since I have been reviewing Christmas movies, or at least those that claim to be about the holiday, I have been writing about them while listening to seasonally appropriate music.  I am doing this as I type this treatment of Christmas in Mississippi.  At this very moment, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is playing, along with a whole host of traditional carols, as is my preference.  This particular song speaks to the originator of the holiday, without which you would not have the kinds of traditions you see in the movie.  I have said this often in recent articles.  What interests me here, and where it intersects with the familiar tune, is its line about God and sinners being reconciled by Jesus’ birth.  To be more precise, this does not ultimately come until He went to His death on the Cross.  Still, it could not be accomplished without Him first coming into the world.  Reconciliation is another word for forgiveness.  Jesus accomplished an overarching absolution for all of us, but elsewhere in the Bible he talks about how we should emulate this in our interactions with others.  Being merciful to others is hard, and it seems exponentially more so with those who are close to us.  But Jesus tells us that we must forgive others repeatedly when they earnestly apologize, and even when they do not make this gesture.  Though it is predictable what will happen between Holly and Mike, she holds on to her resentment for longer than is necessary.  Even when they are on the road to mending fences, she insists that there is nothing more to her behavior than a desire for friendship.  By the way, “mending fences” is the cliché used in the film.  It struck me when I heard it because it is a good way of looking at our interactions with others.  Forgiveness can take on a variety of forms, part of fixing those relations is making a conscious choice to do so.  It works with our relationships with others and God.

The reason I realized that Christmas in Mississippi is a made for television movie is that you can tell when there are breaks for commercials.  Its cheesiness told me Hallmark Channel, though Lifetime makes sense, too.  Despite the schmaltz, I appreciated the gentlemanliness with which Mike treats Holly.  These things should be praised, though I do not think I will be watching this again any time soon.