Do you have a favorite Christmas movie that you watch every year? Mine is Serendipity—the syrupy love story starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. I went to see it when it was in the theaters in 2001 and I just adored it. Here's a brief synopsis from amazon.com:"Jonathan Trager and Sara Thomas met while shopping for gloves in New York. Though buying for their respective lovers, the magic was right and a night of Christmas shopping turned into romance. Jon wanted to explore things further but Sara wasn't sure their love was meant to be. They decided to test fate by splitting up and seeing if destiny brought them back together...Many years later, having lost each other that night, both are engaged to be married. Still, neither can shake the need to give fate one last chance to reunite them. Jon enlists the help of his best man to track down the girl he can't forget starting at the store where they met. Sara asks her new age musician fiance for a break before the wedding and, with her best friend in tow, flies from California to New York hoping destiny will bring her soul mate back. Near-misses and classic Shakespearean confusion bring the two close to meeting a number of times but fate will have the final word on whether it was meant to be."
I don't necessarily believe in the soul mate theory, but I love the idea of two people in love not giving up on one another. In an age where people walk away from love too easily, this message is refreshing.
I love the fact that Jon and Sara acted when they couldn't stop thinking about each other. After they couldn't find each other after their initial meeting, they both eventually moved on with their lives, but when they both came to the conclusion that they may have missed the opportunity of a lifetime, they took risks to try to find each other. Life is nothing without risk.
And of course, being the chick-flick lover that I am, I love the fact that they find each other in the end. I love the last scene where Jon is lying on the pond of ice in which he skated with Sara all those years ago on that magical night they met. As he lies flat on his back looking up into the falling snow, with one of the gloves in his pocket that he and Sara split up and gave to each other, he's pondering what might have been when he sees a matching glove fall from the sky. He pulls out the other glove from his coat and realizes that Sara is near. My stomach flips every time I see this scene.
Surely there are more traditional Christmas movies available, but this one is the one I pop into my DVD player every year about this time. And I can't wait to do it again this year.
