The audacity to call a movie Saving Christmas Spirit (2022) was the first thing I noticed about the film.  Then again, that is something I got simply from the title.  As it turns out, it is a play on words involving a Scotch whiskey label distilled in Scotland.  As such, with Champagne Problems, this makes two of these films in a row that feature booze.  To be fair, they are divergent stories.  The latter is solely about purchasing a champagne company, whereas the former has the liquor as one of many subplots with Christmas providing the umbrella for all of it.  The “audacity” I mentioned a moment ago was this Catholic’s ongoing irritation with these movies and their lack of any Christian theme.  Then again, I am not the keeper of all things Christmas, so you can judge this one for yourself.

The person who is Dr. Lucy Stewart’s (Ashley Newbrough) worst judge is herself, and it seems unlikely that she will be do any Saving Christmas Spirit.  That title in front of her name, by the way, is for archaeology, and she is dodging her faculty holiday party in order to do some extra work.  She feels so driven particularly after her department chair, Percy McDonnell (Tibu Fortes), warns her that her position might be terminated with upcoming budget cuts.  In order to avoid unemployment, they agree that she has to come up with a major find.  This begins by traveling to Scotland over during Christmas in order to research some newly discovered journals.  It is at this point that the film begins to branch off in a few different directions.  Upon getting to her castle-like accommodations, the eccentric innkeeper, Edina McAvoy (Joanne Randle), immediately tries to get the newcomer to meet her son, Duncan McAvoy (James Robinson).  Adding to Edina’s eccentricity is the fact that she believes the ghost of her late husband is still interacting with the material world, including responding to her spoken words.  There is also her American nephew, Finn McAvoy (Jake Satow), and his crush on the rugby playing Caitrin Abernathy (Layla Burns).  He plays the sport, too, but their situation can be more or less ignored for our purposes.  What people watch these flicks for is for the adult romance, and Dr. Stewart is sent to the local pub where she first encounters Duncan.  She first mistakes him for a bartender, but later learns that he is the owner and maker of the eponymous whiskey, and he had been at the establishment peddling his wares.  Their first exchange is a short one, but when she finds a lead on a possible ancient site nearby, she is recommended to him once more as a guide.  Initially, he wants to take up more of her time than she is comfortable giving, but she eventually relents.  Their first trek starts at his distillery where he gets the usually whiskey averse archaeologist to sample his product.  From there, they go out a few times to different places, but they do not uncover the findings she expects to locate.  Nonetheless, she does loosen a little, ingratiating herself into some of the provincial Christmas traditions.  As is a common feature in so many of these flicks, doing so is difficult for her because she lost her parents during this time of year, making celebrating difficult.  Having Yuletide markets, reindeer, and all the trees one can handle helps.  I will compliment her also for contributing to the charitable effort of adopting an area family and buying presents for them.  Duncan, of course, is happy to see her enjoy herself, but he has his own side story causing worry.  He had developed Christmas Spirit with his late father, but it had cost him financially.  As such, he owes money and is under pressure by a bigger company, represented by Iain Cambell (Nicholas Karimi), to sell in order to get the product in stores by Christmas.  He keeps resisting, citing the fact that the business and the land have been in his family for generations.  He is also stubbornly not taking the charity raised by the holiday rugby match at the local school, promising to only do so if he can pay them back when he is more solvent.  Now comes the “all is lost moment,” with Dr. Stewart losing her job and Duncan having something go wrong at the distillery making it impossible to hit his production goals.  She has a fallback, being the curator of a museum of Scottish history in Chicago . . . which does not exist, sorry.  He, on the other hand, does the unthinkable by selling to Iain, though with the stipulation that the McAvoys still own the land.  While this is sad, it does mean that Duncan can now unabashedly declare his love for Dr. Stewart, stating that he is willing to start over with her wherever she goes.  At the moment, though, she gets the inspiration to return to the distillery, realizing the clues that had been leading her around the highlands had been meant for the McAvoy land.  Doing some impromptu digging immediately brings up some artifacts, something I know archaeologists dream about, but what else would one expect from Hollywood?  What it means for our movie is that Duncan tears up his contract and Dr. Stewart decides to stay in Scotland, all of them welcoming this news back at the castle.

That this should all change so quickly at the end of Saving Christmas Spirit should not be surprising given how these movies usually go.  The film talks a lot about magic, and with that as your baseline, anything is possible.  Interestingly, I do not recall the phrase “Christmas miracle” being used.  Instead, the incredible things that happen are attributed to Scottish fables.  Working against this nonsense is the ultra-scientific Dr. Stewart.  She makes the claim that “I don’t believe in what I can’t see.”  This has been a familiar complaint against Christianity for centuries.  So many want some visible form of God’s existence that they ignore the evidence all around them.  The beauty of the Scottish Highlands that inspired poets like Robert Burns, who is quoted a few times, would be one proof.  God gave Burns a brilliance in lyrically describing nature, which can be seen as another.  There is another way of looking at this as provided by the movie.  The most repeated line from Burns is “Nae man can tether time or tide.”  It is a reminder that nobody can control the onward movement of time or the forces of nature.  Our characters take it to mean something having to do with the magic of the season.  For this Catholic, it is about surrender.  The Church teaches that there is nothing we can control, and that acceptance of this fact is what is meant by surrender.  Relinquishing such desires is not the same as that silly old cliché “let Jesus take the wheel.”  We have agency is carrying out God’s will.  However, the more we get out of the way of that will, the better off we will be.  Though they do not acknowledge it, this is roughly where Duncan and Dr. Stewart land by the conclusion.

So, what is my conclusion about Saving Christmas Spirit?  Meh.