My friend Nancy reaaaaally wanted me to watch The Mistle-Tones. It’s a 2012 made-for-TV musical starring Tia Mowry as an aspiring Christmas caroler (?) and Tori Spelling as a big bitch with a little dog, so ummmm…yes please. I could not get my butt on that couch fast enough. I didn’t even do my usual forty-five minutes of mindfulness meditation to get me into the right headspace first.
A lot of The Mistle-Tones consists of people in bright colors singing lightly funked-up versions of Christmas classics while kind of stepping around each other (you could call it choreography, but I won’t). I’m not going to talk about that, even though it was like 80% of the movie, because honestly it was fine and I’m not here to talk about stuff that’s “fine.” Instead, I’m going to tell you the plot.
Warning: this post contains spoilers!
If you’re emotionally invested in the outcome of this ABC Family romcom from ten years ago I recommend you skip the last few paragraphs and use that time to find a good therapist. Apparently you can just get them on the internet these days.
The movie begins with Holly (of course, played by Tia Mowry of course) running late to audition for The Snow-Belles. We learn that The Snow-Belles are a local singing group that performs at the Ridgefield Mall every Christmas Eve, and it’s been Holly’s lifelong dream to join them. We also learn that Holly is A Relatable Character because relatable things happen to her like her cat flushing the toilet while she’s in the shower so she screams and falls on the bathroom floor and immediately rises completely dry and draped in a pristine robe patterned with poinsettia.
Holly just barely makes it to the church before auditions close, but—OH NO!—the Snow-Belles are led by Marci (Tori Spelling) and we can tell right away that she’s the bad guy because she has very red lips and a very small dog and also because she’s Tori Spelling. Marci won’t let Holly audition, even though she isn’t even technically late! But Holly is like a honey badger—she don’t give a fuck. She gets right up on that stage and belts out Silent Night, and everyone is super impressed and claps a lot except for Tori Spelling.
After her audition Holly goes to work. She works for a company that makes business, and her job is Cubicle. At a company business meeting Holly’s uptight boss tells everyone they need to work right up until Christmas Day because of quarterly numbers. Then we cut to Marci wearing all white in an all-white living room arranging white roses in a white vase while drinking red wine like a fucking crazy person, and of course Holly can’t be in the Snow-Belles because then we wouldn’t have a plot.


Holly goes to her sister’s house all sad and her sister is like “why don’t you just start your own Christmas caroling group like Mom did?” and we learn that her mom actually founded the Snow-Belles, the group that Holly now can’t get into because Tori Spelling. What? How? Nobody cares, least of all the screenwriters, and Holly can’t call Tori out for culturally appropriating her mom’s funky Christmas carol singing group and then excluding her from it because it’s 2012 and we’re not really doing that yet, so we cut really quickly to Holly storming into the mall and demanding to speak to the person in charge.
You know who’s in charge of the mall? You guessed it: Mall Santa. Holly cuts a line of children to ask if any group besides the Snow-Belles could perform at the Mall Christmas Eve Spectacular, and Mall Santa is like “you know, you’re right, in the time it’s taken you to say that I’ve arranged for a massive carol-off that’s a combination Battle of the Bands and American Idol, and we’re hosting it a week from today so you better find yourself a singing group STAT.”
The situation seems hopeless for Holly, because where is she going to find a singing group? But then she walks into work and it turns out everyone just walks around singing Christmas carols so it’s pretty easy for her to assemble a ragtag team of lovable underdogs and start rehearsing in her company’s warehouse where they package up all the business and ship it around the world.
There’s a big montage to The Twelve Days of Christmas featuring uncomfortable volumes of packing peanuts, then their uptight boss comes in and ruins it because according to the Corporate Bylaws you can’t love business and also Christmas.
Why is her boss such an uptight Scrooge? There’s a reason, we learn in the next scene: he has a terrible secret. A secret so dark and shameful that should it ever come to light, it would ruin his reputation and his career and his dreams of climbing the Corporate Ladder to be the CEO of Headquarters.
Her boss’ horrible, twisted secret is….[SPOILER ART]….he [oh god how can I even type this?]….he….[okay I’m just going to close my eyes and go for it]….
…………he does karaoke.
He does karaoke and it’s a huge giant secret even though he does it every Friday night at what appears to be the only bar in Ridgefield, and it would have remained a secret if only Holly’s car didn’t spin into a snowbank right in front of said bar on a Friday night and, seeking warmth while awaiting a tow truck, Holly didn’t catch him balls-deep in the midst of this shameful act, just singing away like it wouldn’t get him arrested in 29 states.
Holly, being a much more upstanding citizen than her dirty karaoke-singing boss, takes a video and uses it to blackmail him into coaching her Christmas caroling group. At first he’s appropriately Scrooge-y but eventually he succumbs to their ragtag charm and the irresistible pull of singing slightly funked-up versions of classic Christmas songs and next thing you know he and Holly are doing duets at each other. Then the company holiday party happens and someone spikes the punch and he and Holly end up making out under the mistletoe, after which they are In Love and will be Soulmates Forever, which is always what happens when you get drunk at a company holiday party and make out with one of your coworkers.
Nick (Did I tell you her boss’ name is Nick? Nope, I didn’t need to because every male lead in every Christmas romcom ever made is named Nick) promises to join The Mistle-Tones at the Christmas Carol-off at the mall the next day, and then Holly floats home in a cloud of Xerox ink and spiked eggnog and he gets a call from Headquarters saying his promotion is coming early and he has to get on a plane to Southeast Asia that very night to do International Business internationally.
So the next day is the Christmas Carol-off. The mall is packed. There are 20 different acts competing! First up is the Chest-Nuts. This is hands-down my favorite part of the movie. Then come the Tinsel-Tweens. Why is every group a hyphenated two-word Christmas pun? Doesn’t matter; the Twinsel-Teens are friggin’ lit. They come on stage carolling and doing backflips at the same time, and they continue to sing while literally doing one-handed cartwheels, and they’re only 13! Holly is getting more and more nervous because Nick isn’t there and isn’t answering his phone, because as we know he got on the first flight to Southeast Asia to sell business for profit.
Finally, the Mistle-Tones perform sans Nick. Their act is underwhelming, and undermined by the Snow-Belles descending an escalator in sparkly ball gowns. They lose the competition to the Snow-Belles, which is frankly bullshit because the Twinsel-Teens should have had it in the bag.
Holly is devastated. All her dreams have been shattered. Her family tries to be supportive but the next day they make her go watch the Snow-Belles perform at the mall because they are actually monsters.
Holly is not feeling it. She walks outside the mall and onto main street (any decent city planner will tell you that the best place to put a mall is in the middle of downtown with no parking) and then, very faintly, she hears something.
What could it be?
DUH, it’s a parade float! In just two days Nick has flown to Southeast Asia (an approximately 20-hour flight), changed his mind and flown back again, built a parade float, hired a backup band, and assembled a crowd so he can float up to Holly singing their favorite Christmas duet and ask her to sing with him. At first she demurs but the large crowd is extremely invested in the relationship of these two people they’ve never met and insists she get up there, and then they are singing and the Snow-Belles come out and start singing with them and even Tori Spelling smiles, and Nick and Holly spend the rest of their lives in Twin Flame Blissful Harmony just like everyone else who has ever gotten drunk at the holiday company party and tongue-wrestled with Dave from Accounting.

The Mistle-Tones: 3 Christmas trees and a coat rack.