Advanced Review: On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

The latest holiday movie on the Hallmark Channel, in the very long line of holiday movies that the cable network has been airing every weekend since Halloween (including a five-night event airing over the Thanksgiving weekend), is On the Twelfth Day of Christmas that stars Robin Dunne (Sanctuary) and Brooke Nevin (Breakout Kings).

This time the story centers on Mitch O’Grady (Dunne) and Maggie Chalke (Nevin). Mitch helped Maggie have Christmas when she was certain she was going to miss it and then…Mitch disappeared. Jump 10 years later, finding Mitch moving to Maggie’s small town as their local DJ, but it’s not the same Mitch who Maggie knew before. He hates Christmas now (but he sure seemed to love it the last time she saw him)! Maggie decides, especially in light of Mitch helping her have Christmas all those years ago, that she will help him learn to love Christmas again by sending him twelve Secret Santa gifts of things she knows he loves to do for the holiday. But when her boss forces her to write a story about the gifts, Maggie is torn between helping Mitch or keeping her journalistic integrity, especially when her boss threatens her job if she doesn’t write the story.

This charming story, that was actually co-written by Dunne, reminded me a little of the box office film “Never Been Kissed” in which a wanna-be journalist went undercover for her first big story, falling for the handsome English teacher. But when she was caught, she wrote a tell-all confessional article in the paper that, in the end, allowed her to the man of her dreams. On the Twelfth Day of Christmas has very much the same feeling as that movie (and a very similar storyline), but just with a Christmas twist. And, I have to say that the Secret Santa gifts that Maggie makes for Mitch are really quite lovely and well thought out.  I just have to wonder how Maggie found the time to make the gifts each day, complete her articles on time and spend all the time she spent with Mitch in order to write her stories.  Only in a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie could all that be possible.

Make sure to watch On the Twelfth Day of Christmas tomorrow, Saturday, December 12 at 8/7c on the Hallmark Channel to find out how it all turns out.