I write commissioned pieces. My friend with the Union Square loft asked me to write about my housing situation. The situation is not that I don’t have a house; it is that I have three, two of which have accrued to my possessions more or less by coincidence, and that I don’t quite know what to do with them, not even in a commissioned story. So I’m doing a seasonal piece instead, in dedication to my love for her.
A week or so after Thanksgiving, I start streaming Christmas movies. Provided they are female-lead movies (which most of them are), they make me forget about everything that is absent in my life, which is pretty much everything on the typical Christmas movie arc from mild misfortune (mine aren’t mild, they are existential and life-long) to fulfilment. I will always cry at the end. There must be something in Christmas movies that deep down I feel I’m being denied, or rather, as I don’t allow anyone to owe me, that I have a profound unrequited longing for.
The Christmas movies I like best are the ones with a handsome male lead deserving, on account of certain challenges scripted to be overcome, of the hard-won love of the female star. The man must be strong, reliable, uncomplicated, and practical. He must not be a total dunce, but he is allowed to be emotionally stunted (I’m not attracted to men displaying more than a basic set of male emotions anyway). The female character must be funny, smart, and pragmatic. They must portray people in their thirties, when they will have reached the age of reason, gained credible life experience, and are sexually mature. I demand diversity, but to be able to relate, the central love story must be heterosexual.
The implied requirement is that Christmas movies must tell a love story. They must end with a kiss to seal the bond of (imagined) perpetual love between the principal characters. I’m not interested in Christmas movies about repentance, forgiveness, people who are sick or dying, or orphaned children who find a home and a family. They defeat the purpose. And if I accept that a movie does not take responsibility for the promise of enduring love suggested in the closing scene, I consider movies that deal in the essentially religious themes of atonement, resignation, salvation or moral release an insult to my intelligence and my understanding of life.
When watching a Christmas movie, I scrutinize the smartphones that are used and the cars that can be seen in the streets. They must reflect that the story is set in the not too distant past. While preferring movies that have been released in the year coinciding with the year when the storyline climaxes, I draw the line at 3 years. I get depressed at older movies in this genre. All my plans, hopes and ambitions consistently stranding with the passage of time, I’m only invested in the present. What was sown less than 3 years ago may still sprout, burgeon and blossom (even if nothing worth mentioning ever has in my life). Anything older I consider gone beyond resuscitation, even, for that matter, by a present-day Christmas movie.
The Christmas movies meeting all of the above criteria are comfort food to the thwarted female soul. So how could I not finish with a recommendation, a recommendation I shared with my friend at Union Square as compensation for diverting the original commission. I recommend Falling for Christmas with Lindsay Lohan. The movie is from 2022. This piece was written in December 2024. No doubt the new iPhone is on its way, as is the next Tesla. So if you have a similar urge to keep the past at a distance, have at it sooner rather than later.
___
Hard Nosed Women 