Despite instincts to the contrary, I have found that I have enjoyed more of these Christmas movies than I expected.  To be clear, they are not Citizen Kane (1941) material.  There are common themes and tropes that have made watching them practically every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas border on tedious.  I will be looking forward to watching other films with my free time.  As a programming aside, please note that there will be some of these following December 25^th.  This is a necessary clarification as many do not realize that, for us Catholics, the Christmas season begins on December 25^th and ends on the Epiphany, which will be on January 8^th.  I will be extending my posts of seasonally appropriate examples on Facebook and X until that date.  Perhaps that will inspire you to follow me on social media?  For now, you are getting a sequel to Your Christmas or Mine? (2022), a film I was delighted to find had a follow up with Your Christmas or Mine 2.  I am happy to report there is no sophomore slump here.

In a slight deviation from its predecessor, Your Place or Mine 2 has Hayley Taylor (Cora Kirk) and Hubert James Hughes (Asa Butterfield), henceforth James, rushing into an airport instead of a train station.  This time, instead of boarding separate conveyances, they are flying together with their respective families to a Christmas ski vacation in the Austrian Alps.  Pretty much the whole lot from the previous movie flies and lands in Innsbruck.  Unfortunately, this is the moment that Hayley and James let each other out of their sight.  James does the honorable thing and allows the less well of Taylors take the fancy hotel shuttle.  Meanwhile, James, with his father, Lord Humphrey Hughes (Alex Jennings), dad’s girlfriend Diane (Jane Krakowski), and James’ grandfather Jack (David Bradley), all take a rickety station wagon driven by a scary man to the lodgings booked by Hayley’s father, Geoff Taylor (Daniel Mays).  Meanwhile, the Taylors arrive at the posh Alpine hotel meant for the Hughes’ party.  Do not worry.  This is not an exact copy of the previous movie.  In other words, Hayley and James will not spend nearly the entire movie apart from one another.  There are two key developments, though, while they are in separate parts of this mountainous region.  The first comes during the one time they are able to connect via phone owing to the nearly non-existent cell service in James’ location.  During their conversation, he directs Hayley where to find his toiletries.  In rummaging through the bag, she comes across a tiny box, one typically used for engagement rings.  She had been expecting a Fitbit from him, so she is taken aback and abruptly ends the call.  As for James, while at what passes for dinner in their strange shack, Diane mentions that she can get the budding moviemaker into a prestigious Los Angeles film school.  James is excited, but must discuss this opportunity with Hayley.  Speaking of his would-be fiancée, she tells her dad about the ring, who then assumes that the engagement has happened, which she does not immediately deny.  She does attempt to swear him to secrecy because it actually is not official, but before she returns to her table, the entire restaurant knows.  The following morning, as soon as they are able, Diane and the Humphreys (band name!) get to where they are supposed to be.  James does his best to ignore the knowing looks everyone else is giving him, instead focusing on trying to get Hayley alone so that he can discuss the possibility of them moving to America.  He thinks he has his moment while they are on the slopes, but they are interrupted by Bea (Rhea Norwood), a childhood friend of James.  Another opportunity is spoiled back at their suite.  To cheer the mood, and because Hayley’s mother, Kath Taylor (Angela Griffin), says she is missing home, James suggest they do their Christmas Eve tradition.  This involves the men going to the pub and the women having a spa day.  Diane and Hayley are left alone at one point, and Diane asks Hayley if the young woman is excited about moving overseas with James.  She is not prepared for this revelation, thinking that James is hiding things from her.  As for James, he is amongst a group of men that get very drunk, the result of entering more than one drinking contests.  After their victories, Geoff and James are sitting next to each other at the bar when Geoff gives his consent to marry Hayley.  This is not what he anticipated, so he takes a few more shots before they leave to go back to the hotel.  He does not join the others upstairs, preferring to gather his thoughts at the lounge.  Bea happens to be there, and in the course of their conversation he makes up his mind to propose to Hayley.  Yet, because of his evident nervousness, not to mention his inebriation, she says that he should make a practice proposal with her.  It is while delivering his pretend message that Hayley finds them, mistaking them for hooking up.  Because Bea is from the same social strata as James, it drives home the differences between Hayley and James, not to mention the suspected infidelity.  His fumbling attempt at apologizing and actually proposing, does not work.  Instead, she asks that the Hayleys leave immediately, something Kath is eager to do.  Hayley and James separately get some sage advice, and before their strangely empty commercial plane can take off, she is demanding that the vehicle be stopped.  This goal is helped by Diane, who had not acquitted herself well with the Taylors, and to make up for it had arranged for them to get to the airport at this moment.  There is a tarmac reunion, and they all go back to the hotel to celebrate Christmas Day.  It is during this gathering that Hayley gives James her Christmas present, which is a marriage proposal written six weeks previously on a card.

It is those pep talks given towards the end of Your Christmas or Mine 2 on which I would like to devote my Catholic energies.  With James, it is dad, while Hayley gets her advice from her grandfather (Ram John Holder).  Grandad’s is not the greatest, basically telling his granddaughter that wherever she is meant to be is the place she had gotten to by her own doing.  This is not a massive revelation, a little “new age-y.”  There is an old idiom that says, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  While we humans do have a great deal of agency in the form of free will, I get piqued by statements like those said by grandad because they do not allow for the workings of the Almighty in our lives.  Nothing we do would be possible without God.  This brief moment is overshadowed by a reminder that Lord Humphrey gives to James of what the young man’s late mother used to say: Nothing gets fixed on the wrong side of midnight.  When I heard this, my first thought was of all the bad things that have happened to me in the wee hours after dark.  It is, arguably, a gross exaggeration, but name the last time something good happened after the turn of the day.  Upon further reflection, though, my mind turns to how members of the clergy and female and male religious regulate their days.  If they are awake in the hours immediately after midnight, it is to pray.  Otherwise, they go to bed early to rise at a concomitant time to praise God.  If you are sensing a pattern here, it is intentional.  Everything they do, and we can and should imitate this, will hopefully give God the glory that is His due.  More temporally, our movie demonstrates the wisdom of Lord Humphrey’s words.

Overall, Your Christmas or Mine 2 is another to those seasonal films that uses the holiday as a reason for a romantic comedy.  There is nothing about the plot speaks to the birth of Jesus.  The same is true for any number of this sort.  All the same, I enjoyed what I saw, and would probably watch this one again.  Maybe it is just the accents that do it for me?