ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of nostalgia in the Hallmark Christmas films Northpole: Open for Christmas and Every Christmas Has a Story. Through socio-cultural readings and filmic analyses, certain themes are identified that exemplify how the characters portrayed by actress Lori Loughlin harken back to the Full House character Rebecca Donaldson (“Aunt Becky”) and thereby mobilize sentimental attachments to a mythical past. This past serves as a contrast to feminist advances in the professional and urban spheres, which are painted in an unsympathetic light and are renegotiated into a narrative which privileges white rurality, family ties, and domesticity. This is achieved through reverse migration stories, an idealized portrayal of “small-town America,” tales of patriarchal family restoration, and a constant emphasis on the perceived “moral fortitude” of a socially conservative communitarianism vis-à-vis the urban, neoliberal self. These films not only reactivate key tropes of Reagan-era entertainment of the 1980s, but also connect with current discourses surrounding the rural/urban divide and the effects of globalization and deindustrialization throughout North America.
