Hallmark Holiday Watch: The Christmas Baby (2025)

Watched:  12/22/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eva Tavares

This movie was very offbeat for Hallmark, but a welcome change of pace.  

I tuned in because I saw a few Ali Liebert movies a while back and thought she was better than the average bear.  She's been wearing multiple hats the past few years, though, directing two or so movies per year while appearing in other movies and producing some - so less acting, more behind the lens stuff.  So kudos to Ms. Liebert.  I can barely chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.

Liebert co-stars in The Christmas Baby (2025) with Katherine Barrell, who some may know from Wynona Earp.  The pair play a married couple in Albany, New York, going about their childfree existence when someone leaves a baby in a stroller at Liebert's mail store while she's in the back.

This isn't a Hallmark romcom, it's a dramedy, leaning towards drama.  Unlike 99% of Hallmark's Christmas output, there's a lot of tears and a lot of very real feelings and issues.  It feels more like a TV movie from days of yore than a feel-good bit of Christmas marshmallow you may associate with Hallmark of the past decade.  

The movie provides plenty of questions to answer.  Who is the mother?  What does it mean to suddenly have parenthood thrust on you and what feelings would you have if that wasn't the plan?  What if you and your wife are suddenly not on the same page?  And why aren't you?  And if you commit to this kid, what's to say someone won't just take them away?

We've had adoption in our family, but the picture looked very, very different.  So it was a lot of hypotheticals without easy answers.

This is still Hallmark and this is still a Christmas movie.  Thus, we kind of can guess where we'll end up, but we do have lots of territory to cover as we get there.   

Barbara Niven plays the social worker who assists the baby/ foster moms, and Rebecca Staab* plays Liebert's mother-in-law (Staab just shows up in a weird number of things I watch).  

I think the movie handles a delicate situation (not a Hallmark hallmark) as honestly as possible.  The questions the baby's arrival raise for the characters are about what they really want and who they are, and the movie handles that with grace and kindness for people struggling.  As the potential for motherhood becomes real, the situation absolutely puts a massive strain on the couple, mentally, physically and emotionally.  

But.  You can also feel the Millennial therapy-speak creep in *a lot* in order to prevent anyone from ever saying anything remotely controversial as they sort through the primary and secondary issues.  The filmmakers take great strides to make sure the couple come close to lashing out at each other with understandable emotions - but then they veer to the exact right thing in that moment, even if it's "I love you, but I need some cool down time", while still experiencing their feelings.  While it keeps the movie from delving into cliches of melodrama, it also feels like the two most well-adjusted people on the planet having a crisis.

I honestly don't know how I feel about that aspect.  It was interesting to watch two people *not* try to murder each other and then decide "baby fixes all" at the conclusion, so I guess I'm for it.  But that stuff is hard to write - so they're lucky they got two actors who could pull it off without sounding like a therapy exercise by way of community theater.

My other nit to pick I'll keep to myself, as it is wildly pedantic, but sentence structure matters.  I will reveal my nit only to folks who worked on the film as I assume it bothered no one else and they can't change the movie now.  And it is a nit you'd never notice, so microscopic is my grievance.

But, yeah, I thought this was a pretty solid movie that stuck the landing.  Not just "pretty good for Hallmark", but a watchable movie with three-dimensional characters - weird!  Like, sure, I'm good with time travelling Christmas shenanigans or unlikely romance found at a cat cafe, but if you can do this a couple of times a year with a Hallmark budget?  Groovy.

*Staab was the OG Sue Storm in the Corman Fantastic Four movie!