ABC Family’s 12 Dates Of Christmas: The Highlights Reel

The movie never quite explains what has caused Kate to keep reliving Christmas Eve, Groundhog Day style. For a while I was convinced it was the moment where Kate gets spritzed in the face with department-store perfume and faints.

But instead that's the moment that during which she wakes up each day. The real culprit, it seems, is a partridge pin for sale on the Home Shopping Network: Its eyes light up at midnight, sending Kate back into the past.

Yeah, it's really hokey. Let's just skip it and pretend like it was the universe deciding Kate needs to be a better person.

A pretty funny part of the movie is Day 2, where Kate is convinced that she's dreaming. (Even though her best friend "feels real for a dream" and pinching herself hurts.) So she tackles her date with Miles by predicting everything he'll say, being even ruder to their waitress, and blowing him off to stop her ex Jack from proposing to his new girlfriend.

Ironically, it's later, once she realizes that each day is as real as the last, that Kate makes the really drastic move of dyeing her hair black. That only lasts for one day, though.

A smart juxtaposition that the screenwriter included was that each of Kate's days has her meeting new people and having new experiences -- locating a runaway foster kid, setting up a marriage proposal -- but every day includes Miles. That way she learns more and more about him, like his wife's tragic death and his volunteer work at said foster home. So even though he's meeting her for the first time each day, she knows him better than ever.

Kate starts to realize that instead of being obsessed with making her Christmas Eve perfect, she should be getting to know the other people in her life: The department-store security guy who helps her up from her perfume accident, her lonely neighbor, and of course Miles. As she learns more about him, she keeps personalizing their dates, like setting up lights at this arch that he designed in Prospect Park.

Yet even when she's trying, Kate manages to piss off Miles. Her excitement at getting to know him comes off as stalkery, and she is still hung up on her failed relationship with Jack. Plus, misunderstandings like her saying "I need this day to be over!" make him think that any fun they have is her faking.

ABC Family doesn't have a wide variety of photos, so I'll just continue to list Kate's de-Scrooging here:

-Giving the nerdy guy at the bar (who's always waiting for a no-show blind date named Phyllis) a makeover.
-Learning to bake, which leads to a giant gingerbread house she makes for her father and his new wife.
-Accepting the new wife even though she still misses her mother.
-Tracking down the runaway foster kid, who escaped... because he wanted to have a dog? OK.

The movie has some emotional depth when it comes to grief: Kate's mother's death a few years prior is why she became obsessed with not being alone; and Miles' wife died because he came home from the store a half hour too late.

Unless you're Love Actually, your holiday movie has to end sweetly. After Kate tries for "I'm falling in love with you!" and freaks out Miles, she gets another chance and lets her actions -- inviting his friends and hers to a big holiday party -- make clear that she's changed. The kicker? He says, "This might sound weird, but I feel like I've known you forever." So Kate gets her Christmas karma.