As promised last week, here are this year’s Hallmark bluegrass Christmas movie plot proposals. As in past years, these are cast using a combination of well-established Hallmark Christmas movie actors and bluegrass artists:
Christmas at Wildwood Flower Farms
Financially-driven Boston event planner Stelara McKamey (Claire Lynch) feels she doesn’t have time for the holidays in her busy life, until one day, needing a very large tree for the annual Christmas gala put on by the top corporate law firm in the area, Witherton, Hetherton, Carlsworth, and Smythe, she finds herself driving four hours out of town to Wildwood Flower Farms, which specializes in Christmas trees, maple syrup, and “other crops.” She’s met by the handsome and rustic owner of the farm, Heath Clipper (Brennan Elliott), who welcomes her and introduces Stelara to his grizzled and charming father, Birch Clipper (Willie Nelson). While strolling through the snow-covered groves in search of the perfect tree for overpaid lawyers, Heath and Stelara, after a strained initial meeting, discover a strong connection, as Heath admits that he was once “in the whole financial scene” back in the city, before deciding to leave it all one day in a quest for a more meaningful life with more trees. With word of an impending blizzard, Heath and Birch talk Stelara into staying overnight in the rustic inn they also run, The Rustic Inn at Wildwood Flower Farms.
Later that night, while enjoying hot cider and brownies prepared by Birch, Stelara reveals that before she became so money-focused, she was actually in the music business as a bluegrass singer/songwriter and had even recorded a Christmas album, back when Christmas still meant something to her. “It still can,” said Heath, who hands her a guitar that was hanging on the wall and she launches into the Stanley Brothers’ Christmas is Near. Heath and Birch join in on the trio. Heath and Stelara kiss under the light of the tree later that night. In the morning Stelara tells Witherton, Hetherton, Carlsworth, and Smythe to “get another event planner to do your dirty work!” and moves in, becoming Wildwood Flower Farms’ financial manager.
Christmas at Spruce Ridge Airport
Media executive Dash Flemington (Andrew Walker) is on a business trip the week before Christmas, in which he plans to execute an aggressive buyout of four small, independently-owned radio stations by his company, Upton Sinclair (a division of Channelstar). Three of those stations program bluegrass music almost exclusively. The fourth is a Christian hip-hop station. Unfortunately due to a blizzard, his plane is rerouted from the Twin Cities to a small airport in the quaint town of Spruce Ridge. While waiting there for 18 straight hours, he meets almost everyone at the airport but is particularly taken with a musician named Cassie Frederick (Becky Buller) who was on her way to play a winter bluegrass festival when her plane was also diverted. “I don’t even know where my band is now. They were on a completely different flight. Oh well,” sighs Cassie as the two discuss their mutual travel troubles. Something about the transient nature of the situation and the shared holiday inconvenience leads Dash to open up, and he confesses he used to love Christmas, but it’s never been the same since the tragic death of his wife in a tree-lighting accident 13 years ago. “You can recapture the spirit if you let music into your heart,” Cassie tells him. “I read that in a fortune cookie.” He seemed skeptical but started to soften when Cassie pulled out the fiddle and started playing Christmas Time’s a Comin’. The kindly security guard (Del McCoury), who might also be an angel, brings egg nog to everyone in the airport. It’s suspected to contain rum confiscated by travelers earlier in the week. When he reaches Cassie and Dash, he starts singing along, saying “that’s one I used to sing with my boss Bill back in the ’60s.” He doesn’t elaborate.
Dash and Cassie are clearly bonding and soon it’s revealed that Dash knows all the words to Away in a Manger and isn’t a bad singer. Some tension develops, though, when it turns out that Cassie’s brother Timmy (“The Bluegrass Voice of Spruce Valley”) is the morning drive DJ on one of the stations Dash’s company intends to buy and convert to a sports-talk format.
By the time Dash’s plane actually arrives, he’s a changed man and tells Cassie he’s going through with the buyout but that he’s going to maintain the bluegrass format, and will even “double Timmy’s salary.” “And what about your plane?” he asks Cassie. “Oh it’s never coming. I live here now.”
The security guard, winks as they kiss goodbye and vow to reunite at the Spruce Ridge Airport.
A Prince at Windy Pines
The quaint and rustic inn, Windy Pines, is owned by kindly but burdened Briscoe Lariat (Tim Stafford). He laments that his hotel has been in the Lariat family for four generations but is now in trouble with costs outpacing what they can charge for rooms and food. His daughter, Alana Briscoe (Lacey Chabert), who is the principal chef at the inn’s renowned restaurant and bakery, regrets that she may need to take an outside job at a steakhouse in nearby Bluff City. One snowy night, a young drifter named Huntley Brinkley (Billy Strings) arrives, carrying only a backpack and guitar, seeking lodging for a couple of nights. They give him “The Reindeer Room,” considered the best room at the inn, as an upgrade, and to repay their kindness, he takes out the guitar and sings and plays a heartfelt rendition of Beautiful Star of Bethlehem. The hotel’s maintenance man, Ashby Frank, pulls a mandolin out of the janitor’s closet and joins in. It turns out that Briscoe is an accomplished guitar player himself, but the stress of running a struggling rustic inn has interfered with his music. Soon he too is playing along. Briscoe and Alana are so moved by the music and camaraderie they forget the inn’s woes for a while. Briscoe tells Huntley that tonight’s a special night because Alana is doing her annual Christmas cookie-baking. “Her cookies are famous in these parts, and the sales at Christmas are the only thing keeping this place going.”
It’s clear that a connection is developing between Alana and Huntley, and while in the kitchen, Alana insists he help with the cookies, while Huntley opens up about his music and what brought him over from “another land” to Windy Pines as he searches for the true meaning of Christmas. Huntley plays a song he wrote for her on the spot called Christmas Cookie Princess. The mandolin-playing maintenance man hears this but realizes a mandolin isn’t really wanted in this intimate situation.
The next evening, while out for a walk in the snow, enjoying the inn’s Christmas light display, Huntley kisses Alana and finally reveals the fact that he’s not a drifting musician at all but a prince from the kingdom of Ionia, and he has plans to bankroll the inn for the next 15 years, even paying for the building of a concert hall where he, Briscoe, and the maintenance man will be the house band. Alana will sell cookies.
