Christmas-Reviewer BEWARE OF BOGUS REVIEWS & REVIEWERS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION & THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE FOR THIS FILM! NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 300 Christmas MOVIES. I HAVE NO AGENDA. I AM FAREThis is not a "Christmas Movie" but it takes places at Thanksgiving and that starts off the "Christmas Season" Inspired by a short story, Isabella Caldwell is a high-society woman in late-1800's New York. When Isabella's estranged daughter Mary becomes ill and is too proud to ask her mother for assistance, Mary's daughter, Tilly, takes it upon herself to contact her grandmother and plead for help. Isabella's arrival causes an upheaval in many lives, but may also lead to reconciliation within the family.The film is very enjoyable. You also learn there is more than one side to every story. There is a reason why "People Do What They Do At The Time That They Did It". It also shows that no matter what choices we make there always consequences for whatever decision we have to make. What is nice about this film it does everything between the lines. It does assume the audience for this film is not a stupid one.

bigverybadtom This TV movie is based on a short story by Louisa May Alcott, and is set in post-Civil War New England, on a farm where a widow, her adult daughter, and her two younger children live. But the farm is poor, the family is unable to pay the rent, and they are running out of resources with winter coming. The mother has been estranged from her own mother, a rich society lady, but the adult daughter, on her own accord, decides to write her grandmother-and the grandmother, having had her carriage break down, decides to come and visit the family. The reunion is fraught with problems, but that is only the beginning as we find out more about the family's unhappy past.This is no smarmy feel-good story. There are not only the inevitable family conflicts springing from the reunion, but we see that tragedy in that era can be just around the corner. The father had died in a farm accident, people are killed by bad weather, and a scarlet fever epidemic infects many people and killed a number of them. A farm helper has been traumatized as a Civil War soldier and has lost his ability to speak.The story may be "old-fashioned", but tragedy can still be around the corner nowadays as well as in the past.

bard-32 It wasn't great but it was good. I'm not as harsh as the reviewer who gave it three stars, and I didn't give it 10 stars either. I gave it 7 stars, which is in between. What did I like about it? The story was believable. Scarlet fever, and other diseases that we have medicines for today, was a killer. It was set on a farm in New Hampshire just after the Civil War. Tilly, the oldest of three children, is a writer who concocts an incredible story to get her wealthy grandmother to come up. Then, as now, people were worried about losing their homes in foreclosure. Ellis Bassett was killed in the war and Mrs. Bassett has to pay rent to Mr. Hopkins, whose son. Gad, wants to marry Tilly, but her mother opposes it. Where does she go? What does she do? Watch the movie and find out,

stephenfrakes-1 I think that the problem that most people have with this movie is that it is so far removed from Louisa May Alcott's story that the only thing they have in common is the title and the name of the family. And on a more personal level, my maternal grandmother being a Bassett from the old New England family, I didn't like that they turned Ellis Bassett into an Irishman, when Bassett is one of the oldest and well-known Norman-English names in England and Old Yankee names in New England. And so as not to make anyone mad, I do have some Irish in me and I don't have a problem with being Irish. It is just the turning of a name into something it isn't. It would be like calling the Kennedy family English.So, now that I gave what I didn't like about the movie, this is what I loved. The movie was excellent. The costuming was out of this world. The homes in the movie were perfect. The plot line was good. The actors were great. And like with most Hallmark movies, I really felt good at the end of the movie.So if you watch this movie just on its own, not comparing it to the original story by Louisa May Alcott, then you're going to love it.I purchased the movie and it will be one of the movies that my family and I watch every year near Thanksgiving Day.