At first glance, A Merry Little Ex-Mas looks like yet another holiday rom-com — a comforting, predictable love story done up in a tidy bow. Only in this case, that festive wrapper is made of green ribbon. Any environmentally minded viewers will quickly clock Ex-Mas as not just a corny yuletide romp, but a PSA for sustainable living.
That’s why, on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, a few Grist staffers cozied up on their couches to watch a Netflix film our editor-in-chief assured us was actually a climate movie “disguised in holiday romance sappiness.” Alicia Silverstone (of Clueless fame, and a sustainability advocate in real life) plays an environmentalist named Kate, an architect turned handy-mom. Her passion for the planet — which manifests in familiar hippie tropes like composting, shopping secondhand, and making ornaments out of “recycled and found objects” — borders on obsession, in the eyes of family and friends tortured by such sins as handmade gifts and a carbon-sequestering live Christmas tree.
She’s been separated for months from her husband... Read more
