Most of the world thinks of the Christmas season as ending on December 25^th, even if it begins for some after Halloween.  There is a good portion of that group that will extend their celebration until New Year’s Eve.  Netflix appears to be in that category as they are taking their Hallmark Christmas movies off their platform on December 31^st.  For us Catholics, or at least those who acknowledge the proper observance as put forward by the Church, Christmas goes until what is usually the Feast of the Epiphany, but this year will be the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord on January 8^th, 2025. That should also give you an idea of how many more of these reviews you will have from me.  However, what do you do when you live at a place called Christmas Island (2023)?  Luckily, I suppose, there is a movie of that title that gives you some insight into how that looks.

Captain Kate Gabriel (Rachel Skarsten) is far from Christmas Island when our movie opens.  She has just landed at a Los Angeles airport, being a pilot for an airline doing regional runs.  She is hoping for a promotion when shortly after her arrival, she takes an interview to become a private pilot for charter flights.  She impresses her interviewer during their discussion, especially the part where she reveals that she has no attachments preventing her from working major holidays, like the upcoming Christmas.  With that bit of information, she is offered an immediate position before the meeting is over and she accepts.  She is put in charge of flying the Sharpe family, who own some kind of fashion empire, to Switzerland for the Holidays.  Once she has them aboard the plane, it is to the skies, which become progressively bumpier as they reach the East Coast of the United States.  As they are about to head over the Atlantic Ocean, they pick up a report from Oliver MacLeod (Andrew W. Walker), an air traffic controller from the eponymous location.  He finds her stubborn desire to do well for her clients annoying, finally telling her that she must ground her jet at Christmas Island instead of anywhere in New York, for example.  Have I mentioned that Christmas Island is in Nova Scotia?  Because Christmas Island is in Nova Scotia, nobody is thrilled about being in the middle of nowhere Canada.  Nonetheless, Jim MacLeod (Peter MacNeill), the town’s mailman, is there to welcome Captain Gabriel and the Sharpes (band name!) to the area, opening his home up to them for the night.  It also looks like they will be there for a few days.  Captain Gabriel is eager to be away for a few reasons.  First, the pilot is the one always blamed for delays, and she wants to do a good job on her first flight.  Related to that, the second reason is that she had promised the Sharpes that they would get to their destination by Christmas, which is important because they also have business meetings lined up for their time in Europe.  Finally, she is not one for the Holidays, having had some bad experiences when she was younger as is later revealed.  Still, because of her dedication to professionalism, she volunteers to do whatever she can to take the pressure off of Helen (Kate Drummond) and Thomas Sharpe (Jefferson Brown) as they await takeoff clearance.  Because they are still focused on their business, Helen comes up with the idea of Captain Gabriel playing nanny since their actual one had gone ahead of the family to Switzerland to prepare for their arrival.  Captain Gabriel is not equipped for such duty, but she puts on a smile and does her best to keep a seven-year-old boy, Finn (Lincoln MacNeil), and fifteen-year-old girl, Cali (Britt Loder), occupied.  Because she lacks the Christmas spirit, she turns to Oliver, who loves this time of year, to help show them around a locale that does all the expected seasonal activities as a community.  This helps to get them more in the spirit, and thaws the ice between Captain Gabriel and Oliver.  He even gets her into the events of this time of year as they inevitably fall in love.  My apologies for sounding glib.  It is just that I, and probably you, have seen this movie before under a different title, and love is always in the air.  Helen and Thomas, too, are finding their time at Christmas Island more enjoyable than they expected.  It is reminding them of the kind of Christmases they use to spend with one another before financial success took their focus in other directions.  For Thomas, this comes as he is helping to construct a decoration in the shape of a tree for the town center made of lobster traps, connecting him to when he had designed their company’s first store fronts himself.  With Helen, it is designing dresses for the upcoming Christmas Eve party.  Everyone is having a good time being there when on that same evening, they receive word that they have been given permission to leave.  I expected Captain Gabriel or Oliver to keep this information from the Sharpes, but they do their jobs and they decide to board the plane.  Of course, as they are about to takeoff, Oliver gets on the radio to tell Captain Gabriel that he has more to say to her about his feelings.  After she informs the Sharpes about this, they decide they want to stay until New Year’s, and that they are making her their regular pilot.  This great news is sealed with a kiss between Captain Gabriel and Oliver, and the movie ends.

Most of these movies end with a kiss, and obviously Christmas Island is no exception.  And just to clear up a possible geographical question you might be forming, the title location is not a body of land surrounded by water.  To be fair, it is on an island, that being Nova Scotia.  Confused yet?  Good.  What can also sometimes be confusing is following God.  You can think your life is headed for a Christmas in the Swiss Alps, but then you land in a remote part of Canada that has the word of the Holiday in its name.  The lives of the Saints are full of examples of unexpected turns, though you do not have to stray from the Bible to find instances of this happening.  In Acts 8:38-40, Philip, one of the Apostles, was baptizing a person in one place one moment, when in verse 39, “the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.”  According to Scripture, Philip then carries on evangelizing in another location as if nothing happened.  His example may be a little extreme, and does not seem like it fits with anything I described in the movie.  What I would highlight from my brief description of the Apostle’s experience is his docility to the will of God.  His mission is to bring people closer to God, which he is enthusiastically doing in one location.  Then God plucks him and puts him somewhere else (one could say he was Divinely teleported) and he carries on with doing God’s will.  Captain Gabriel is similarly focused on doing that to which she is called.  She believes she has a purpose to fulfill, and everything appears to be going according to that plan.  However, God can suddenly have different ideas for what He wants us to be doing that we can never foresee.  Life works best if we are open to those changes and accept them.  Please understand that this is not a kind of “roll with the punches” ethos.  Without God, that becomes a directionless way of life that can lead us into some bad places.  Like finding love in unexpected places, God gives us purpose.

So, yeah, there is Christmas Island for you, an expected seasonal flick in an unexpected location.  Like others, it follows a similar pattern and hits all the familiar notes.  There is nothing objectionable about it, it is just unoriginal.