Campfire Christmas
Because "Dumpster Fire Christmas" is off-brand.
Last night I listened to this podcast about Hallmark Christmas movies. I learned a lot! Did you know that Hallmark produced the very first made-for-TV Christmas movie ever? It was in 1951, it aired on NBC, and five million people tuned in to watch it.
And you know what else? It was a motherfuckin’ opera. That’s right: back in 1951 America was still classy enough that five million people sat down in front of their giant black-and-white TVs to watch an opera. (Side note, I grew up watching a lot of opera and this was always one of my favorites because it’s only an hour long. Suck it, Wagner.)
Also, Hallmark invented wrapping paper. So if you weren’t mad at them for other stuff, now you can be mad at them for that.
By now you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Campfire Christmas. And I’m getting to that! I really am.
But first, more Hallmark Christmas movie facts:
Most Hallmark Christmas movies are shot in Canada.
Hallmark location scouts actually drive around Canada looking for the most picturesque small towns to shoot in.
They do most of their filming in the summer.
Each movie is shot in about 15 days.
Hallmark spends about $2M per Christmas movie.
Of that, about $50k goes to the writer.
And, because they’re shot in the summer, another $50k goes to fake snow.
Which now actually does bring me to Campfire Christmas, which is an absolutely typical Hallmark Christmas movie in every single way except that there’s no fake snow.
So where did the $50K snow budget go? Certainly not to the writers. I’m pretty sure what happened was they got up to Canada and piled out of their Hallmark caravan in whichever tiny Canadian mountain town their scouts had chosen and opened up their trailers full of Random Christmas Crap and started stringing wreaths everywhere, and they were probably on Day 2 of shooting when the director was like “okay, cue the snow!” and everyone stood around waiting for the snow and only then did they realize that the tractor-trailer containing all the fake snow had careened off a mountain road into a Yawning Canadian Abyss and, oh shit, maybe they should send out a search party for Fred.
So now it’s mid-summer in Canada and they have 13 days left to shoot this Christmas movie and no fake snow.
First they call the writers and are like, hey is there any way we can re-write this thing to not have snow? And the writers are like, dude the movie is called A Snowy White Christmas in Snowville, so no.
And the director’s like, listen, I got everyone up here, you must have something. So the writers go digging around in their Vault of Ideas That For A Very Good Reason Have Never Seen the Light of Day and are like, okay here’s our top three:
A Cut Above Christmas, about a brooding butcher and sprightly vegan chef vying to take over a rustic Christmas Inn—but things are heating up in the kitchen and it’s not just the plum pudding!
A Very Scary Christmas, about a woman whose face is horribly disfigured in a sleighing accident but learns to find love with the plastic surgeon who reconstructs it.
Christmas Purr-Fection, about a big-city career gal who inherits her great aunt’s cat-themed Bed & Breakfast and goes to Christmastown intending to sell it to Corporation, Inc. but ends up falling in love with the Health Department Inspector who keeps showing up to be like “dude this B&B has too many cats.”
Naturally the director rejects them all, and in the meantime the actors are all standing around in winter coats drinking hot chocolate in 90-degree heat and the leading lady’s blowout is starting to sag, and the writers are like, well look, we have this summer camp thing…
It’s not a Christmas movie. It’s about a group of adults returning to summer camp where they were teenage counselors because it’s about to be sold—you know, like Wet Hot American Summer but not wet or hot or American. But maybe we can, I don’t know, Christmas it up somehow? Just spitballing here, but maybe this summer camp’s thing was Christmas in July, and we can just take all the summer-camp stuff and throw some mistletoe at it and call it a day.
So instead of Capture the Flag, they play Capture the Wreath.
And instead of making lanyards they make Christmas ornaments.
And instead of having a regular-ass camp play they have a camp Christmas pageant.
And instead of sleeping in cabins they sleep in cabins with a bunch of Christmas crap all over them because there’s like a decorating competition or something.
And instead of swimming in a lake they can—well fuck it, they can still swim in a lake. Just have a couple people paddle by them in a canoe with Santa hats on.
At this point the actors throw off their winter coats and strip down to bikinis and the leading lady’s blowout magically perks back up again and the location scout is like, hey there’s a summer camp with a lake three towns over let’s go shoot our movie there!
So they all trek over to this super Christian summer camp, and the people who own it are like, okay fine you can shoot your movie here but they’re kind of bitchy about it because it’s the middle of summer and they’re trying to actually run a summer camp.
Even though they have a point (and it is legit irritating when all the Christmas lights blow a fuse and they have to do their evening sermon without a microphone), how lame is it to be bitchy about Christmas?! So as payback to this super Christian summer camp the Hallmark people add a gay B-plot with dudes who actually kiss.
So yeah. Campfire Christmas is an unremarkable Hallmark Christmas Movie with an unremarkable plot, unremarkable characters, and a remarkable-even-for-a-Hallmark-movie lack of knowledge about how the publishing industry works (the heroine is an aspiring writer who works as an executive assistant to a book editor and has pitched several completed manuscripts to her boss and no-one else, and it’s like girl go Google how to get an agent!). But the lake is pretty and the gay characters smooch on camera so I’m giving it:
Four Christmas Trees.
