The Christmas Retreat
A festive retreat from reality and common sense.
I had to watch The Christmas Retreat based on its description on Amazon Prime:
“When Kim's boyfriend breaks up with her instead of proposing, Kim's mom takes her away to a Christmas Retreat to reconnect with the spirit of the holiday.”
I had so many questions. What is a Christmas Retreat? Is it a real thing? Do people really go on them? If so, which people? Where? Why? And how much does it cost?
Despite watching this whole entire movie, most of my questions remain unanswered. The script works under the assumption that a Christmas Retreat is an Actual Thing that we’ve all heard of, so when ambitious lawyer Kim’s mom is like “aw honey I’m sorry your derpy doctor boyfriend took you to a nice restaurant to dump you instead of proposing, why don’t you come on a Christmas retreat with me?” Kim’s first response is not: “mom are you drunk, wtf is a Christmas retreat?”
Instead it’s: “gee I dunno Mom, I had big plans to work over Christmas because my boss told me I’m about to make partner, after effusively praising me for finding the evidence that will finally allow us to evict the senior center.” And then some stuff happens and she ends up going anyway.
In the meantime, ambitious finance guy Mark quits his ambitious finance job after learning that the Big Promotion is going to the boss’ nephew. He calls his sister Rae, who takes a break from hanging red and gold bowling balls on a Christmas tree to convince him to come to her Christmas retreat that she runs.
Best I can tell, a Christmas retreat is when two romantic leads, three secondary characters, and four extras go somewhere with a really big fireplace to do Christmas shit. It’s neatly organized by day so the writers don’t have to do the heavy lifting of organically working all the normal Christmas movie shizz into the script: they do crafts on Craft Day, baking on Baking Day, good deeds on Good Deeds Day, etc. They even fully cop out with Let Loose Day right around the midpoint—cause hey, why have your main character start letting loose on her own when you can work it right into the schedule?
Needless to say, the Christmas Retreat does its job of helping Kim and Mark rediscover the joys of Christmas and, of course, fall in love. Hooray! But ruh-roh, it turns out Rae is planning to sell the property to a luxury developer—it looks like this festive Christmas Retreat will be the last!
Mark, newly reconnected with nature, his Christmas spirit, romance, forestry, hot cocoa, and ornaments the size of a cocker spaniel thinks it can be saved by doing radical things like hosting more than one retreat a year. But will he be able to convince Rae to let him help her formulate a business plan that isn’t whackadoodle? Or will the Christmas Retreat become yet another Ghost of Christmas Past?
When I watch extremely location-specific Christmas movies I’ll usually start Googling around to see where they are, if they’re called the same thing IRL, and if I can go stay there. For this, I started Googling Christmas Retreat because, honestly, seven days of guzzling eggnog and making your own ugly Christmas sweaters sounds pretty swell.
I found a lot of different kinds of retreats. Art Retreats. Wellness Retreats. Fitness Retreats. Yoga Retreats. Meditation Retreats. Healing-from-Trauma Retreats. Writing Retreats. Religious Retreats. Personal Finance Retreats. Corporate Retreats. Couples Retreats. Board Retreats. Bored Retreats. Nature Retreats. Ayahuasca Retreats. There are retreat centers everywhere! Some of them look nice AF.
But you know what I couldn’t find? A Christmas Retreat.
So uh…look, I know a business opportunity when I see one. I see an audience, and I see a market, and I see a giant fucking hole in that market. All I need is an enormous fireplace, a 55-gallon drum of eggnog, and some festive bowling balls for my tree. I literally have cookie dough chilling in my fridge right now, just waiting for paying customers to turn it into cookies. People will come from far and wide to be sent into the woods behind my house to gather decorative pine boughs. I already own a snow baller! Know any career ladies with good hair who are too busy chasing that promotion to have time for Christmas? Send ‘em my way! Got some extras who can rock red and green? For just $2,599 (per person, double occupancy) I will hand them each an antler headband and a mug of hot cocoa.
Listen, though, I’m gonna need some start-up capital. So if you need me I’ll be down at the Christmas Market handing out flyers to rustle up investors.
The Christmas Retreat: Two Christmas Trees with GIANT BALLS
