But here are a few: At one point, Vinnie sees adult Jennifer and Gabby together and calls them “bulldaggers,” a slur that fell out of fashion sometime around the Nixon era. There are too many other fantastically absurd moments in A New York Christmas Wedding to count. But hang ornaments they do, and one of those ornaments is a figure of Gabby’s now-adult dead gay fetus, who will never actually exist because Gabby ended up deciding not to have procreative sex that day. If you’ve ever been a high-schooler, you know that after one single kiss with the person you’ve been lusting after for years, you are not inclined to calmly hang some ornaments. They exchange a single chaste kiss, with the basket of candy canes somewhere between them-then seamlessly transition to decorating the tree. Jennifer confesses her love for Gabby, and Gabby reciprocates. Gabby arrives at Jennifer’s home holding a gigantic basket of oversized candy canes. This somehow convinces Gabby to not sleep with Vinnie and opt to decorate a Christmas tree with Jennifer instead. On that day, as a teen with the life experience of a 30-something, she is calm and semi-supportive when Gabby decides to sleep with Vinnie, instead of getting mad at her. Jennifer chooses to rewind her life 20 years, to the day of her fight with Gabby. It does require that people confess their sins before communion, and it deems gay sex a sin, so I guess if any of the queer people who were non-consensually summoned to the altar had had gay sex and not confessed it to a priest yet, the communion-giving would have contravened Catholic teaching, making it some kind of history-making moment for Father Big? The priest says this is a big deal and some kind of first-but in real life, the Catholic Church doesn’t bar gay people from communion. He then calls out the names of every queer person in the congregation and brings them up to the altar, effectively outing them, so they can all take communion together while the straight congregants look on approvingly. He literally says “love is love,” to cheers from the parishioners (with a few nominal walkouts). But the next day, at the parish Christmas service, he gives a big speech about how Catholics need to stop being homophobic to prevent more gay Catholic suicides.
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(For all of its waylaid themes, this movie is suddenly about homophobia in faith communities too.) The priest rebuffs the couple for what we’re told is the second time. Gabby begs the priest to flout the Catholic Church and marry her and Jennifer, because “the Supreme Court ruled” and Pope Francis is kinder toward gays than his predecessors.
Then, on the subway home to her fiancé, Jennifer longingly gazes at two canoodling femmes, an oh-so-subtle indication that there may be some sublimated queer desire coloring her memory of her friend. Through some painful expository dialogue, we learn from present-day Jennifer that Gabby died before they could reconcile. (Both girls are played by younger actors in the flashback.) Gabby bails on their plans so she can sleep with a jerk named Vinnie, and Jennifer is so upset that she tells Gabby to lose her number. In a flashback from 20 years ago, we see a teenage Jennifer preparing a Christmas spread for Gabby, who’s supposed to come over to help her decorate the tree. The holiday also marks the anniversary of Jennifer’s friendship-ending falling-out with Gabby. (They should have gone one step further and called it A Surprise New York Christmas Wedding, which would have been accurate to the plot.) It’s not, but there are a fair number of recognizable tropes in the movie: The film opens with a line about the 8 million love stories in New York City, Jennifer has left her job at Goldman Sachs for a lower-paying but presumably more fulfilling one at a vet’s office, and Christmas is a tough time of year for her because both of her parents are dead. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was a parody of holiday movie clichés based on the title alone. I’m now going to reveal what happens in this movie, because it is impossible to describe the depth of its mania if I don’t.