I have a hard time finding Christmas movies I really enjoy, which is why my list of preferred holiday movies hasn’t changed in almost two decades: Muppet Christmas Carol, Nightmare Before Christmas, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, Batman Returns, and maybe Charlie Brown. (And yes, I’m aware of the over-representation of early 90s Tim Burton on this list.) There’s a lot about the more upbeat Hallmark-y Christmas movies which I don’t really connect with, but at the same time, I don’t enjoy the opposite extreme: the mean-spirited cynicism of movies like A Christmas Story or Jingle All the Way. I need a Christmas movie which, like Charlie Brown, is aware of the holiday’s commercialism but still looks for its redeeming aspects (or at least has Batman in it). So when Jessi wanted to check out the Disney+ movie Noelle starring Anna Kendrick, I went in with caution and was pleasantly surprised by the movie’s earnest exploration of the meaning of Christmas.

The movie follows Noelle (Kendrick), the daughter of Santa Claus, who lives at the North Pole in a sheltered blissful state of year-round Christmas cheer (not to mention Christmas puns). Meanwhile, Noelle’s underachieving brother Nick (Bill Hader) is overwhelmed as he prepares to take over the family business from their father. When Nick disappears a week before Christmas, it’s up to Noelle to take the sleigh and track him down. Sure, it’s a pretty standard setup for a “countdown to save Christmas” kind of story, but when Noelle ventures out beyond the North Pole, things get more interesting.

Noelle openly acknowledges the tension between the commercialization of Christmas and the holiday’s more hopeful themes of peace and charity and community. Thankfully, while part of Noelle’s journey involves moving away from the more surface-level Christmas cheer into these deeper themes, the movie doesn’t hit viewers over the head with this moral lesson. There’s a humanity to this movie as Noelle discovers her ability to sit and listen to the people who need “Christmas cheer” the most, and the film openly addresses how Christmas won’t fix people’s problems, but the holiday still offers a chance to take a breath amid the difficulties of life.

Watching Noelle, I found myself thinking back to the old infamous Karl Marx quote, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” The quote gets a bad rap, but Marx wasn’t simply dismissing religion; he was pointing to its use as a painkiller for people trying to survive in a difficult world. Noelle seems to say something similar about Christmas:

Yes, the holiday has gotten very commercial.
Yes, a lot of the “Christmas cheer” is frivolous.
Yes, for many people, it’s all about getting gifts.
But Christmas also offers us a chance to look for the best in each other,
to meet one another in love and acceptance,
to take a moment to rest and reflect in a busy season,
and to close out the year (no matter how difficult it’s been) on a note of joy.
So while Christmas certainly isn’t the squeaky clean hug-fest many of our Christmas movies portray it to be, Noelle argues the holiday is still worth it because all of us could use a little joy.

Also, Billy Eichner’s data-fixated Cousin Gabe character is amazing, so go get your friend’s Disney+ password and watch Noelle.