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, a small-town doctor named Everett, who once upon a time whisked her away to his idyllic hometown of Winterlight, forcing her to leave her professional dreams behind in Boston. But enough about him. He barely matters. (Plus, he has about as much personality as recycled cardboard — perhaps why Kate likes him so much.) This movie isn’t about their reconciliation so much as it’s a hot cup of cocoa for the souls of neglected, crunchy, 40-something women who yearn to curl up with a movie that whispers, You are right. You are valued. You were smart to install all those solar panels.
As we started a running commentary on the movie in Slack, it didn’t take long for each of us to see something of ourselves in the protagonist. She shares her first name with senior staff writer Kate Yoder, along with a fondness for long words (like “thermodynamic”), and similar life experiences with associate editor Claire Elise Thompson, who also followed her doctor husband across the country. Teresa Chin, Grist’s executive editor, couldn’t help but identify with the antimaterialist mom who champions homemade and secondhand goods. Anyone who has given climate change more than a passing thought will probably find something in Kate to relate to.
All of the movie’s other characters are little more than props or foils for Kate, but there were two who caught our attention. One was Chet, Kate’s brief fling, a delightful himbo who appears to appreciate her interests more than anyone else in her life. Chet is to Winterlight what Kirk is to Stars Hollow, seemingly holding every job possible — including, we learn at the end, driving a snow plow as an emergency response volunteer. (Their love story would have made for a better movie, if we’re being honest.) The other was Kate’s house, nicknamed “the Mothership,” a picturesque Victorian that had us all cooing in the group chat because of its resemblance to the storied house from the movie Practical Magic. Spoiler alert: It’s the Mothership that truly saves the day in the end.
Though the movie never mentions climate change explicitly, it’s sprinkled with environmental mentions. There are more references to sustainability than there are cheesy romance scenes. They go beyond the low-hanging fruit of eco-friendly lifestyle stuff like worm bins. Kate recommends a neighbor install a heat pump when her furnace breaks down. One of her fathers-in-law (yes, the family has two gay grandpas) asks her about geothermal energy. Her husband even calls her by the nickname “Al,” a reference to Al Gore — evidently the only environmentalist he’s heard of, apart from Kate.
Kate’s friends and family make fun of her environmentally-minded quirks. And she may deserve it a little — for much of the movie, she leans into the fun-killing environmentalist trope (at one point, in response to seeing Everett’s new house bedecked with energy-guzzling Christmas lights and inflatable lawn decorations, Kate exclaims, “I can hear the polar ice caps melting!”) But over the course of the movie, it becomes clear how much her loved ones admire her and share her values, if not in exactly the same way. Her kids, for instance, admit that her passion inspires them to pursue their own dreams.
And Kate’s preparedness comes to fruition when a windstorm knocks out the town’s power, leaving her solar-panel-and-battery-laden home the only one in Winterlight with lights (and, for that matter, heat). The neighbors flock to the Mothership like it’s a climate resilience hub. Inspired by the warmth of her community, Kate decides not to return to Boston to take up her old green architect job, but to stay in Winterlight with Everett and start her own sustainability company, which she describes as “making a difference in my community and changing the world, one person at a time.” It’s a model of “think global, act local.”
As Teresa put it in our group chat about the film: “I mean, let’s call this movie what it was — a fantasy where everyone in your life eventually realizes that they were wrong, you are right, and you also get to live in the Practical Magic house during Christmastime.”
A Merry Little Ex-Mas may not be the rom-com of the century — maybe we’ll get the Kate-and-Chet chemistry that we deserve in a sequel — but as cozy wish fulfillment for people who care about the planet, it’s a 10 out of 10.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Netflix holiday rom-com is secretly an environmentalist fantasy on Dec 23, 2025.
