It’s Christmas in July! Have you been watching the movies airing on Hallmark Channel? I know I’ve caught a few this month!
This movie, though, isn’t a Hallmark movie. I watched it on Hulu when it had its holiday hub going and I enjoyed it a good amount. And I didn’t see the twist coming until the end. So that was a plus.
Let’s take a look at The Christmas Calendar!
It is the first Christmas Emily (Laura Bell Bundy) will spend without her believed grandmother, Nonna. She has given up her law career to take over her grandmother’s bakery, enjoying making the same recipes she used to make with Nonna as a child. Chey (Paloma Kwiatkowski) helps her and works the counter, though she more often than not eats the merchandise rather than sell it.
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Emily runs into Gerard, at first not knowing he’s the new baker at the super store. She gives him a few tips as he tries some of her samples. They also feel as if they know each other. And before he leaves, he points out that there’s a package for her. No one knows who left it and Emily opens it to find a replica of her grandmother’s house. It’s also an Advent Calendar and she opens the first door to find a little riddle inside. Emily doesn’t know what it all means but Chey is excited about the mystery.
Chey places the house by the register and it draws the attention of the town, starting with local busybodies Edna (Jacqueline Robbins) and Pearl (BJ Harrison). People start to stop by and Emily agrees to open each clue at the same time each day. She and Chey start posting them by the door for people to read and sales start to go up as people also buy things while in the bakery. Emily is pleased but baffled by who could be behind the riddles, especially once the town becomes convinced she has a secret admirer. There’s even a running pool at the local bar where people can guess who the admirer is.
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Then there’s Eddie (Curtis Tweedie), the local handyman. However, he’s a bit too young for Emily’s sake. It also becomes clear that Chey has feelings for him and that it’s very likely they are reciprocated, so it’s not him either.
Another possibility is Chuck (James Pizzinato), who runs the local Christmas tree lot. He makes his interest in Emily very well-known but he’s pretty boorish and crude. Emily has no interest in him and turns him down.
Meanwhile, others think there’s another candidate, especially once Gerard and Emily realize they had met each other in New York a few years earlier. It had been an embarrassing moment for her but Gerard seems enchanted by it. She is upset that he’s the one trying to put her out of business and that he used some of her tips to help advance that cause. He insists he was just hired for a job and doesn’t want to hurt her business.
Eventually, Emily and Gerard start to bond more. There are scenes of them sharing baking tips and recipes together. And they even end up on the same bowling team, where he asks her questions with each strike he rolls. They get closer and Emily starts to hope he is the one behind the calendar after all.
Speaking of The Christmas Calendar, it gains fame after Wally (Greg Rogers) runs a story about it in the town paper. TV news picks it up and people start flocking to Emily’s bakery to see the calendar, read the riddles, make their guesses and buy some treats before heading home. This annoys Adele and she starts plotting to take Emily’s bakery down. Gerard and Emily’s burgeoning relationship gets caught in the middle and things look bleak for them.
As Christmas Eve approaches, the rivalry between Emily’s bakery and the super store’s comes to a head when Adele calls in a report to the health inspector. Emily and Chey have to leave a party to handle a surprise inspection. But they pass with flying colors since their paperwork and permits were in order and they follow all the rules regarding maintaining a clean facility. Go Team Emily and Chey!
The inspector then realizes that there’s a bakery at the superstore and decides to pay them a surprise visit, no doubt suspicious that they may be trying to put the competition out of business through less than honest means. He approaches Gerard and while Gerard maintains a clean kitchen, he does not have all the applicable permits and paperwork required to operate a bakery. Adele was supposed to handle all of that and in her zeal, she overlooked it. The bakery gets shutdown by the health department.
But Adele is not ready to give up just yet. She makes friends with Chuck, who steals Eddie’s big ring of keys and uses it to sneak into the bakery. Their plan is to steal The Christmas Calendar, open the last door and ruin the final reveal, stealing Emily’s thunder. It’s got to be the dumbest plan ever. And Chuck is not a very good thief as he ends up trapped in the bakery overnight.
Christmas Eve arrives and Wally surprises Emily with a TV news crew who has come to do a story on the calendar. Emily lets them into the bakery and they start filming when they hear something in the background. As the film crew is filming, Emily discovers Chuck in the kitchen. He spills everything pretty easily and it seems Adele’s career is pretty much done.
The big moment is here. Everyone packs into Emily’s bakery as she opens the last door and reveals who sent the Christmas Calendar. Turns out it was Nonna – she had it commissioned so she could spend one last Christmas with Emily. Which is so sweet and was pretty obvious from the get-go. I mean, why would a Secret Admirer create a calendar in the shape of her house? Anyway, some people are disappointed that they won’t get to see Emily find True Love but others are even more pleased with the outcome.
It is then revealed that Gerard was the only one who guessed the right answer.
Emily celebrates Christmas with Chey’s family. Chey’s daughter Chloe (Cassidy Slingsby) looks out a window and spots a mysterious woman (Susan Wilkey) who has been lurking around town watching. She then walks away, disappearing.
But all’s well that ends well. After everything that happened, Adele is fired and leaves town with Chuck. The supermarket contracts with Emily to provide their baked goods and the money they give her allows her to save both her bakery and her grandmother’s house. And she gets to hire Gerard to help her in the store. She admits that she hoped he had sent her the calendar and they share a kiss.
We then flashforward a year to see the two kissing in the bakery as the camera zooms in on a picture of Nonna. It’s the mysterious lady Chloe saw last Christmas!
Looks like Nonna made sure Emily would have some merry Christmases for the rest of her life.
So how was it?
It was a cute movie if the “mystery” is pretty easy to solve. But I enjoyed the journey and watching Emily figure it out. Bundy and Zub had good chemistry that made you root for those two crazy kids to make it all work out. They probably added a few too many things to keep them apart than they needed but I guess they had to pad out the movie somehow, right?
The side romances were also sweet. They didn’t overwhelm the main storyline but played just the right role in the story.
I did have to roll my eyes when the news crew became immediately disinterested in the story once it was discovered that her grandmother sent the calendar and not some secret admirer. But I think that would’ve been a better story – a grandmother celebrates Christmas with her beloved granddaughter from beyond the grave. Hearts – tugged.
Bottom line – it’s a cute story with a sweet romance. Give it a watch with some hot chocolate and a plate of cookies to enjoy. And you’ll get to hear Laura Bell Bundy sing as well, so there’s a plus.
See everyone next month!
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