We learn another piece of plot from a superfluous character who tells the audience Hanna that a storm is coming and it’s going to block the view of the Christmas comet.
Her friend and fellow nurse Julia AKA Dotty tries to cheer her up by bringing her to the decorating and lighting of the town gazebo. It’s a celebratory time, and Christmas to boot, except for Hanna whose husband Chet (yes you read that right, it was the 40’s ok) has been lost in the war. The year is 1945 (the same year “It’s a Wonderful Life” takes place) and the Second World War is wrapping up and troops are returning home. What that purpose is and how we get there is messily done with larger and more twisted questions, which Hallmark wouldn’t touch with a 39 and a ½ foot pole, left looming in the background. By moving CCB into the future she can see how her contributions in the past prove that she did have purpose after all. While “It’s a Wonderful Life” removes its protagonist and forces him to watch from the sidelines (via guardian angel) as those he loves have terrible lives without him ever being born, eventually instilling his desire to continue to exist, “Journey Back to Christmas” instead takes the cheaper, but much messier, route of time travel (via a comet-not even joking). In “Journey Back to Christmas” CCB opines that she has no purpose now that her husband has been lost in the war. In “It’s a Wonderful Life” Jimmy Stewart opines that the world be better off without him, he has no purpose anymore. How much effect does one person have on the lives of those that surround them? It’s a philosophical question posed and resolved in the much better Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” but since Hallmark can’t pass up any script that has ‘Christmas’ in the title and Candace Cameron Bure attached to star, it gets posed again and left messily unexplored in “Journey Back to Christmas”.
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