![]() ![]() Jack and his father Ox ( Peter Boyle) have a family business. They’re affectionate and warm, rowdy and loving, immediately welcoming and ready to believe the best. Image via Buena Vista Pictures Distributionīut where Lucy is alone, the Callaghans are anything but - they’re the picture-perfect family, practically begging to be slapped on a Christmas card. When you find yourself without those things, the constant reminders of what you’ve lost make it a decidedly un-wonderful Christmastime. The holidays can be oppressive in their cheer - depictions of family, of big meals and piles of presents and warm hugs, are everywhere. She doesn’t have a decorating partner, so she and her cat festoon the tree in tinsel in an effort to brighten an empty apartment. She doesn’t have someone to carry her tree up to her apartment, so she rigs an (ill-fated) pulley system. Her beloved father got sick, she upended her life to care for him, and then he died, leaving her on her own in a city she didn’t choose, trying to make sense of a life that was lit gold by a loving glow that has now gone out. Lucy is deeply lonely more than that, she’s grieving. RELATED: 10 '90s Rom-Com On-Screen Couples That Should be Reunitedīut what makes the movie such an effective holiday story, even once it tips over into a new year and the long stretch of winter doldrums that follows December’s celebrations, is the way it acknowledges how hard these days can be when mirth is hard to manufacture. ![]() When they finally come together for good on the fateful L platform where Lucy saved his brother, it’s the magic and warmth of the holidays that made it possible. ![]() Lucy and Jack kiss awkwardly under the mistletoe, have an even more awkward New Year’s Eve, and hold each other as they slip awkwardly on the ice. Over the course of one romantic Chicago winter, Lucy is instantly embraced by the Callaghans, invited to their Christmas celebration where a present is already waiting for her - one she clutches to her heart rather than opening right away, as the giving is the gift for someone used to being on her own. ![]()
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