A Soldier for Christmas from director/writer/producer Aaron Greer is an Indie Christmas romance. Hannah (Renay Rayes), a military widow, and her young daughter are challenged to find the joy of Christmas in a life upended by tragedy. She’s still grieving her husband, who died in combat, while friends and family are setting up dates trying to find someone new for her.
Her brother Joshua (Mitchell Doerr), who is also in the army and deployed, introduces her to his Sergeant, Ryan (Joe Barra). They hit it off, and when he comes to town to visit, they start dating. Shortly after that, he meets her daughter, Carmen (Davia Inns). They begin a long-distance relationship that deepens over time, but Hannah finds the stress of his absence difficult, particularly given that she endured the same situation with her late husband. They fight over his commitment to God and country. At this point, they both get mentorship from authority figures, which in her case is Santa Claus. His advisor may be of a more spiritual nature. Will Hannah and Ryan work it out and wind up together at Christmas?
Greer has made this a family-friendly film with a strong Judeo-Christian bias. There’s much discussion of church life and faith, and those around Hannah are either seen praying for her to find a man or telling her that they are. The film is meant to be a ministry, serving as marketing for an archetype of a Christian hetero-normative nuclear family. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the societal context of this type of parable implies that it is the only acceptable configuration. Inside the insular Christian bubble, A Soldier for Christmas provides reassuring comfort in the rightness of this idea. It’s reminiscent of the Billy Graham Crusade films that began to circulate in 1953. These movies usually ended with an altar call in the theater for anyone who had a spiritual epiphany and wanted to convert.
“…a military widow and her young daughter are challenged to find the joy of Christmas…”
To keep the focus on the relationship, establishing details are minimal. We don’t know what town Hannah lives in, nor where Ryan and Josh are deployed. A nitpick about military protocol: Joshua is seen saluting Sgt. Barnes. In the army, Non-Commissioned Officers (I.E.: Sergeants) are not saluted at any time. That seems like a detail that would have been easy to get right.
Greer spoke to WoodTV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about his motivation for making the film. “I have a lot of close friends and family members who are in the military, so I wanted to make a film that just honored their service and then also to show support to the families that do have servicemen and women all over the world. The second thing was the story did come out of a little bit of me working through some grief in my family. My wife and I had actually gone through an interrupted adoption last year, so this film dealing with loss and how do you overcome loss and rediscover joy and love again, that was an important thing for me to kind of just — that was my creative way of working through it this last year.”
There was clearly a limited budget, but the production quality was still good. The cinematography is commensurate with the spend, and the soundtrack is adequate. The performances are of soap opera caliber. A Soldier for Christmas is not for everyone, but for a viewer who loves a low-key faith-based romance, it’s exactly what you’ll expect.
"…provides reassuring comfort..."
