Six Degrees of Santa

Year: 2022

Actors: Steve Lund, Kathryn Davis, Charlie Ebbs, Kimberly Huie

Duration: 87 min

Divorced with a preteen daughter, Harper McNevin works in the family's New York City retail store, McNevin's, which sells paper goods, this job after working unhappily in the tech sector in Silicon Valley for tech giant Jason Sparks whose ethos she despises. Jason, currently working out of his New York office, has launched his latest project, a mail order, genetically perfect Christmas tree service, after its launch which he will take a hiatus from work to focus on finding himself. This Christmas season will be the third that Harper will have led her pet project, Six Degrees of Santa. With a modest online presence, the project provides solely the inspiration and the recognizable gift boxes, the rest done by the legions of Secret Santas who use the boxes to send a gift of some meaning to whomever, from a best friend to a total stranger, that person keeping that gift for a couple of days before becoming its second Secret Santa to move that gift along, and so on, with the sixth receiver of that gift to be its owner, with he/she not necessarily knowing anything about the five previous givers of the gift. Harper hopes to bring some human connection important at Christmas through this project. The sixth recipient of one of Six Degrees of Santa gifts is Jason, the gift an out of print children's book, Northbound Elf, with an inscription by its Santa #1 writing about how much the book meant to her as a child and how it has shaped her life, feelings mirrored by Jason who believes Santa #1 may be his soulmate who he is determined to locate. Jason is able to locate Harper, after a recent antagonistic encounter with her and discovering that she is an ex-employee of his, for her to help him find that Santa #1. She eventually agrees on his proposal that he in return help expand the online reach of McNevin's which may close unless business picks up. The problem for Harper in agreeing to this proposal is that she is said Santa #1 who has no interest in having a personal relationship with Jason as he envisions. As such, she enlists one of her neighbors, social media influencer Zoe who is all about promoting herself, to be Santa #1, Zoe, with Harper's blessing, who sees a business benefit in a relationship with Jason but not a long term personal one. The problems become that Zoe does end up falling for Jason despite there really being no human connection between them stemming from the book, and that Harper too sees a different, more human side to Jason in spending time together, the longer she waits to come clean that she is really Santa #1 the less palatable the information will be to Jason. Harper and Jason forming a long term bond is further threatened by Jason's initial implication that he could hijack non-copyrighted Six Degrees of Santa to make it into more of a business.—Huggo

Genre: Action   Comedy   Romance