I was pretty selective with my holiday movie viewing this holiday season. I didn’t just sit and watch whatever Hallmark stuff was on Amazon. I watched a few older favorites and one new one, but in looking at what I found myself drawn to, I realized I had a few themes that are showing up in my writing, so maybe I should lean into that.

The two big themes that seem to be hitting me are “getting your act together” and “building community.” Which was basically what Tea and Empathy was all about.

I rewatched Last Christmas after having seen it at the theater when it came out, and I think I liked it more the second time because I didn’t have any particular expectations. That movie was basically all about the heroine getting her act together, but the way she does that is by building a community as she starts actually listening and talking to her family and then reaching out to the people around her. In the end, she’s pulled all those groups together. This is one I might bother getting on video because it’s so heartwarming and life-affirming.

A new one I found this year was This is Christmas, another British film. This one was less about getting one’s act together and was mostly about building community, but the act of building community helped a lot of the characters improve their lives. In some ways, this movie reminded me of a less problematic Love Actually in that it had a countdown to Christmas and involved a group of people whose lives overlapped (but didn’t have a guy making a move on his best friend’s wife). In this movie, a man realizes that he sees the same people every day on the train as they commute from their suburban village to London, but in spite of seeing so much of each other, they don’t really know each other. One day, he impulsively invites them all to a Christmas party, and then he has to pull the party together. The act of creating the party helps create a community among these people, and once they start reaching out to each other, relationships form. It’s really rather sweet.

One of my favorites that I rewatched this year was 12 Dates of Christmas, which is basically a Groundhog Day story in which a woman is set up on a blind date on Christmas Eve, but she’s distracted by her scheme to get back with her ex. After both the date and her attempt to get back with her ex fail, she finds herself living the day yet again. Over the course of reliving that day twelve times, she gets her act together and builds a community, as she lets herself interact with the people she keeps seeing.

Perhaps it’s because of the fact that I’m looking at making a move that these themes are hitting me, or maybe I’m making a move because of these themes. I’m hoping I can find a community in that new place — and considering I had more of a social life in a few days visiting there than I’ve had in years living here, that looks good — and I’m constantly trying to get my act together. But who would have thought that watching Christmas movies and realizing why I like them would give me so much insight into what’s going on with me? This is all a big theme in what I’m hoping to do with the Rydding Village series, as each of the characters gets their act together and as this happens a real community begins to form in the village. I think my life is coming out in my art and in the art that makes me happy, and that, then, is reinforcing some of my life choices.