Where Are You, Christmas?

Christmas used to be Chicago-based Addison Dean's favorite time of the year, but that quickly changed in working in Christmas branding activities twelve months out of the year. So instead of going home to the small town of Red Lake Falls to spend Christmas with her Christmas fanatical family in the Christmas fanatical town, she has for the last several years gone to the Maldives for the holidays to escape Christmas. This year, however, her brother Connor Dean convinces her as the only person he tells beforehand to go home to help him celebrate proposing to his girlfriend Sienna on Christmas Eve, the two having met at the town's Christmas Festival on a Christmas Eve when she first moved to town. Addy still intends to head off to the Maldives on the 26th, which will allow her also to spend the big day of her town councilor father Nick Dean's Christmas charity, Operation Christmas Smile, with him, it being Christmas Day itself. Feeling overwhelmed by everything Christmas with her family, Addy wishes for Christmas to just go away. Her wish is not only miraculously granted in no one but her even remembering what Christmas is, but that everything has turned to black and white in rather sad shades of gray. In returning a military service ring her somewhat surly mechanic Hunter Blakeman accidentally left in her car, it which was a Christmas gift from his now deceased grandfather when Hunter joined the service himself, he becomes the first person to remember a happy memory of Christmas in his return to color. He admits that he only recently moved to Red Lake Falls to take over the garage from said grandfather and to hide from the world and Christmas, the ring which provided him as a memory of what Christmas means. As Addy and Hunter start to fall for each other, they believe the key to getting people to change back to bright and happy color is to make them remember the happiness of Christmas in their lives. However, Addy, in helping others remember, may face the biggest challenge in remembering herself in long ago having lost the spirit of Christmas despite her work.—Huggo