Part One: A Holiday Romance With a Little More Magic

There is something immediately inviting about A Biltmore Christmas. It has the familiar warmth audiences expect from a holiday romance, but it also adds something that makes the experience feel a little different: time travel, old Hollywood glamour, and a story built around the mystery of a beloved Christmas film from another era.

Released by Hallmark in 2023, the movie stars Bethany Joy Lenz as Lucy Hardgrove, a modern-day screenwriter who is given the unusual assignment of writing a remake of His Merry Wife!, a fictional holiday classic originally filmed at Biltmore House. When Lucy travels to Biltmore Estate looking for inspiration, an hourglass unexpectedly transports her to the set of the original film in the 1940s.

That premise gives A Biltmore Christmas an advantage that many holiday romances do not have. Instead of simply moving a character from one town to another, the movie allows Lucy to step into a completely different world. She encounters the glamour, manners, clothing, filmmaking style, and atmosphere associated with old Hollywood while still carrying the perspective of a modern woman.

The result is a movie that feels nostalgic without being entirely dependent on nostalgia. Lucy isn’t simply looking backward. She is trying to understand the past, understand the story she has been asked to recreate, and ultimately understand what makes a Christmas story meaningful in the first place.

That emotional idea is at the heart of the film. Beneath the time-travel fantasy and romantic comedy is a story about discovering that sometimes the things we think we need to change are actually the things we need to understand.

And that is one reason the movie has remained memorable for viewers. It offers escapism, but it also gives that escapism a purpose.