My original intention had been to get these films watched and reviewed long before this date.  To peel back the curtain on The Legionnaire, my goal is to have my reviews written and programmed into the blog well in advance.  Unfortunately, this did not happen this Christmas season.  Instead, we are past New Year’s and I am still watching Yuletide cinema.  This matters little for a practicing Catholic.  If you walk into a Catholic Church on this day and wish a parishioner or a priest Merry Christmas, it would be considered appropriate.  Say it elsewhere and you might get wondering looks as if you have been living under a rock for the past month.  My streaming services are increasingly falling under the latter of these categories.  On Netflix, for example, my “For You” list has gone from practically nothing but seasonally appropriate suggestions to only a couple titles.  It is also strangely insistent on a few of romantic comedies.  Thus, while this is not the last treatment of this material until late November, let us get this over with by talking about The Christmas Contract (2018).

It could very well be late November when The Christmas Contract begins.  Website developer Jolie (Hilarie Burton Morgan) is at the house of her lawyer best friend, Naomi (Danneel Ackles), preparing for a holiday party.  Assisting is Naomi’s husband, Martin (Antwon Tanner), but of less assistance is Jack (Robert Buckley), Naomi’s brother.  There is some history between Jack and Jolie, which explains why she is annoyed with him.  When she had first arrived in New York City, Naomi had tried to set up Jolie and Naomi’s writer brother.  Instead, he had something come up, and Jolie had not accepted his excuse.  Their feud then spilled over to Naomi’s wedding, where Jack and Jolie fought the entire time.  Sounds like a promising set up for romance, huh?  Naturally, this is the last thing on anyone’s mind until Jolie learns that her ex-boyfriend, Foster (Hunter Burke), has a new girlfriend.  This would not be a problem if not for the fact that Jolie is returning to her hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana, for Christmas.  Because Foster remains a family friend, she is bound to run in to him.  It is Naomi who first thinks of the solution.  In order that Jolie appears less pathetic to Foster, Naomi suggests that Jack also go to Lafayette.  Jack and Jolie are against the idea from the start.  However, Jack’s career convinces him otherwise.  His agent presents him with the opportunity to ghostwrite a romance novel, one that is set in Louisiana no less.  Though he is not thrilled by the prospect of penning such stuff, the agent promises to give better promotion for his other work.  To accomplish this task, he is given a list of romantic tropes that are usually found in these kinds of stories.  With that, he goes to Naomi to have her write up a legal contract stating that he will pretend to be Jolie’s boyfriend in exchange for the programmer building him an author’s website.  With that, it is off to the South.  Jolie’s family is surprised that she has a guy with him since she had not announced it, but are welcoming.  Immediately, Jack is asked to pitch in with the big town tradition: the Christmas market, which is run by Jolie’s parents, Renee (Cheryl Ladd) and Tim (Bruce Boxleitner).  At the same time, it does not take long for Jack and Jolie to encounter Foster and his new somebody.  It is at this point that the “contract” gets real.  Prior to this, Jack had been somewhat aloof, sticking to his books and writing, and only explaining himself when necessary.  Now, he must act affectionately and make up stories extemporaneously about how he met Jolie.  Remarkably, he finds that he does not hate the process, though the list makes it somewhat easy to figure out what next to do.  As for Jolie, she is beginning to fall for Jack as well.  They do things around the market, participate in activities with her family, and, most importantly, she thinks less of Foster.  Things progress so far that they share a mid-movie kiss, which is outside the norm for these films.  It leads to him asking if they can formally date when they return to New York and are no longer contractually obligated to do so.  The only one who could mess things up at this point is Foster.  While out running one day, Jolie notices her ex and his current partner fighting.  As it turns out, the other woman had been his own ploy to make Jolie jealous.  She admits the same to Foster about Jack, and they have a laugh before departing.  However, seeing the real love between them during a family bonfire, Foster’s envy gets the better of him.  Taking Jolie aside, Foster tries to get her to be with him.  When she refuses, he loudly accuses Jack of being her fake boyfriend.  That startles everyone, but later that night while talking about the outburst, she notices the list Jack had been using as inspiration for the book.  It matches with what they have been doing, and which has been leading to the deepening of their feelings.  Despite his claims that everything he said is genuine, and even quitting the writing project, she requests that he leaves.  Renee tries to console her daughter.  At the same time, Jack asks Jolie’s sister, Breonna (Jordan Ladd), for some help in winning Jolie back.  He sets up a number of the writing prompts around the Christmas maze, explaining his true thoughts on each one, before they finally lead to him.  They kiss and the movie ends.

Thus, despite that mid-movie kiss, The Christmas Contract ends like the rest of them.  Because I have said so much on this subject, particularly how they are not really Christmas movies, I am not sure what else to add.  To illustrate this point, I took zero notes while viewing the film.  Culturally speaking, I was somewhat interested in the Acadian traditions surrounding Noelle.  That is Christmas in French, by the way, which makes sense given that this group of people are of a French extraction.  While the phrase “Joyeux Noelle” (Merry Christmas) is heard once, the rest of it is pretty lights and decorated trees, stuff you would see in any part of the country this time of year.  Does the addition of gumbo make it more distinct?  I guess, but I am also not sure what that has to do with the birth of Jesus.  Finally, the living history Acadian village in which the Christmas market is set has a small church in it.  However, there is not a single scene in it.  I have no idea if it is a working place of worship, or a façade to show what would have been typical for such a settlement.  If it is a place where people pray together, then Jolie’s family has no excuse for not attending.  I say that for a few reasons.  First, and this is clear in the bonfire scene, they appear to live next to the village.  All they would have to do is walk a few hundred yards.  To be fair, I suspect this is simply a function of the filming location.  Nonetheless, with it all being made up anyway, why not have church be one of the functions?  This becomes more prominent when you analyze the culture a little further.  Acadians are Catholics.  While not every one of my co-religionists practices as I do, those who are at least willing to accept the Roman title tend to go to church on Christmas.  Yet, we get no mention of a Mass.

Because there is nothing about Mass in The Christmas Contract, it makes it even more of a skippable movie, at least from a Catholic perspective.  I cannot say I am surprised by its absence given how this is the norm for these films.  Nonetheless, my complaint will remain that they need to do a better job of talking about the reason for the season, and this one is no different.