The 16 School Days of Christmas: `I Hate Christmas’ is just another desperate search for a `holidate’

Netflix’s new Italian holiday rom-com, I Hate Christmas, shows a classic holiday tale with a plot that would have looked right at home on the Hallmark Channel.

The series follows Gianna, a single, 30-year-old nurse living in Venice, as she gets a better understanding of herself as well as the relationships surrounding her. 

 The plot starts at a family dinner, where viewers meet Gianna’s family, which consists of her supportive father, a mother who is constantly nagging Gianna about being single, and siblings who have settled down with families.

Tired of her family’s constant passive-aggressive reminders, Gianna claims that she has found someone and is going to bring him to Christmas dinner. This leads her on a mission to find love in 24 days, which makes for some humorous circumstances. 

Gianna, with the help of her friends, ventures out of her comfort zone into different hobbies and takes desperate chances in her search for a boyfriend. 

Throughout the series, men seem to be falling out of the sky for her, as she is able to meet many different men from different walks of life – from a high school student to a former congressman, and from a fisherman to a doctor. 

The introduction of so many characters and random sub-plots makes the story tangled up. There is even a hint of an LGBTQ love interest during one of the episodes, but the writers drop the idea quickly, creating some confusion about what love looks like for Gianna. 

The series lasts six episodes, all focusing on Gianna’s journey of finding love. Viewers should be forewarned that they might find the ending to be a bit frustrating.

The only aspect that separates this show from most Christmas rom-coms is the idea that love is not just around the corner. Gianna is very choosy in her quest for love and ends up making many wrong decisions. She is also often too quick to judge others, making it hard to root for her to actually find that boyfriend before Christmas.

The only eye-catching part of the show seems to be the beauty of Venice in the background. While seeing its breathtaking sights, viewers also get to see the city from the point of view of the people who see it as home. 

 Overall there is not much unique in this series; it’s the same tropes and conventions of countless other romantic comedies. The storyline itself is a rushed version of Netflix’s Norwegian series Home For Christmas, which aired a few years back.

The show will definitely leave some of the audience wondering when, if ever, humans will grasp the notion that people can be content with being single.

 Love is seen as the highest level of emotional achievement and the situation is even worse during the holiday season, when every happy ending seems to end with the main character finding “the one.”