As a practicing Catholic, I hear something like “on call energy healer” and I get angry.  It is not a full-on, rant and rave at the top of my lungs, kind of an anger.  It is one that makes me groan and roll my eyes.  There are those among us who, for better or worse (depending on your perspective of eternity), believe in “energies” that are sometimes attributed to divine forces.  Insomuch as they believe in God, they fit Him into the lens through which they view the world.  Such worldviews are a product of the Enlightenment, begun by people like Voltaire, who once said “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”  From then on in the West there has been a gradual shift from God being the center of the universe to man occupying that place.  I do not have the time or inclination to elucidate the logic path that leads one from Voltaire to energy healing, but it is all of a piece.  I bring this up because it is a part of today’s film, Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas (2019).  We come up with the kinds of things you see in the movie because we have lost sight of the one true Originator of it all.

Speaking of losing sight, the flighty Jess (Aisha Dee) cannot focus on the demands of her work, prompting her to lose yet another job at the beginning of Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas.  She is sanguine about her situation, though, as it gives her the opportunity to talk to her best friend, one of those energy healers named Kara (Kimiko Glenn).  Jess walks to Kara’s house not just to vent about being fired.  Jess has a date that night and she is looking for advice.  Kara hopes this one sticks since Jess has a reputation for not settling on a guy.  With that, she meets Ben (Kendrick Sampson), an aspiring artist, for some drinks.  They hit it off, share their first kiss as they get to their respective cars, and talk about the possibility of a future meeting.  As before, Jess is on the phone with Kara talking about how great the night went.  At the same time, Jess gets texts from Ben voicing his own enthusiasm.  Before she can respond to him, she is t-boned by a pickup truck and dies.  Remember, kids: no texting and driving!  Kara is devastated, and delivers a moving eulogy at Jess’ funeral talking about all the things they had hoped to do together.  Ben, unaware of the fatal accident, believes Jess is doing to him what the title suggests.  He vents his frustrations to Mae (Jazz Raycole), his sister who is studying to be a mental health professional.  She offers her brother all the words one would typically tell someone worried about their relationship status, and he tries to accept the simple explanations.  As we shall see, there is nothing simple about this situation.  While meditating in her home, Kara opens her eyes to find Jess sitting in front of her.  Once they recover from the shock of a dead person talking with the living, they begin trying to figure out how this might have happened.  Given the extraordinary nature of this development, Kara takes them to her own energy healer, Chrissy (Missi Pyle).  It is evident that she is a charlatan, partially because, unlike Kara, Chrissy cannot see Jess.  Nonetheless, Chrissy explains that there is something preventing Jess from “ascending.”  By the way, get ready to hear that word often if you watch this film.  In other words, there is unfinished business that is preventing Jess from, to loosely quote Shakespeare, shuffling off this mortal coil.  The initial theory is that she has never experienced that one “big love.”  Ironically enough, as Jess and Kara are walking through the market discussing this possibility, they run into Mae.  While Kara and Mae converse, Jess notices Ben sitting by himself.  Jess sits down in front of him and, incredibly, he can see her, too.  He assumes that she had been avoiding him for some reason, even accusing her of faking her death, until Kara explains that Jess is no longer among the living.  This is underscored by the fact that the one person among them to whom Jess remains invisible is Mae.  Despite not parting on good terms, Jess remembers how Ben had wanted to take her to a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and gets Kara to take her.  Ben and Jess find each other there, and it is the beginning of a romance that Jess hope will allow her to “ascend.”  Meanwhile, Kara and Mae start to get closer.  Through their interaction, we learn that Kara has been resisting the possibility of learning new tea preparation techniques in Morocco as part of her energy healing because she does not want to part from Jess.  To Mae, Kara’s decision is holding her back, and submits the application for Morocco surreptitiously.  Another public service announcement (PSA) from the film: always be honest with your friends.  After managing to share an intimate night with Ben, Jess finds that she is not yet able to ascend.  Upon returning to Kara’s place, Jess overhears them talking about Morocco and is upset that her best friend had not told her about this possibility.  The subsequent fight not only imperils the friendship, but bodes ill for the budding romance between Kara and Mae.  Making up with Kara seems impossible for the moment, so Jess goes to Ben to apologize for walking out on him after their night together.  In turn, he gets her to make a portrait of her and Kara and display it at his Christmas Eve art opening.  At the same time, Jess arranges for Kara’s winning tea to be judged in the contest that could send the energy healer to Morocco.  Doing these things are what allows Jess to move on, and Kara gets one last glimpse of her best friend before Jess dissolves.  One year later, Jess is sitting at a bar in what I guess is supposed to be heaven when in walks Ben, who has died of a heart embolism.  He wants to share an evening together, but this is her one day of the year she gets to return to visit Kara.

I am not sure what else to call where Ben and Jess meet at the end of Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas than heaven.  I will blame it on this talk of ascending, which is a Judeo-Christian concept of what the soul does after we die.  In short, I get frustrated by this mishmash of Christian and new age concepts, and this is all without addressing the treatment of Christmas, or the lack thereof.  I chose this one because I thought it might have a sort of Dickensian angle to it, conjuring comparisons to A Christmas Carol (1843).  The only thing that Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas has to do with Dickens or the actual holiday that inspired all this is the word at the end of the title.  Otherwise, it is just like all the other romantic comedies with a Yuletide backdrop.  Unlike those others, which quickly fade from memory almost as fast as I watch and write about them, this one had me on the verge of tears.  Arguably, the only thing that kept me from becoming an emotional wreck was the ridiculousness of this stuff about energy healing and teas.  If I can boil down one aspect of the story, though, to make it more palatable to this Catholic, it would be the need of being able to let go.  One thing that is frustrating about these new age themes is that they try to make sense of powers that can only be understood and wielded by God.  Why does God heal some and let others remain wounded?  Why do some die and others live?  Sometimes, those answers can be given us by God’s grace, but other times it remains a mystery.  This, too, is a grace.  If God grants you the knowledge that leads to a benefit, then praise God.  If not, then that is an invitation to journey deeper and rely more fully on the God that loves you more than you can possibly comprehend.  Either way, one canno not effect change by waving a magic stone or drinking a special tea.  By the way, what I am talking about does not pertain to some kind of physical ailment, but something more intrinsic to who we are as humans, as children of God.  It is the kind of thing that God provides to the grieving heart that allows us to let those we love go when they pass away.

At the same time, it is kind of cute that throughout Ghosting: The True Spirit of Christmas, Jess and Kara pre-emptively say their final goodbye in case Jess manages to ascend while they are away from each other.  The film has nothing to do with Christianity, but we are taught to be prepared for death in case something like what happens to Jess occurs.  What keeps me from recommending this, then, is all the New Age stuff.