As I approach my 50th birthday, I notice myself reflecting more on the what-ifs. What if I had chosen a different major, pursued another career, or moved to a different city? Who might I be now? These questions can feel scary or uncomfortable to ask, especially if different choices would impact our closest relationships. We may love the people in our lives and still reflect on a life we might have lived or wonder about the possibilities of different realities. Would we have been happier if we had chosen differently?
This tension is the focus of What If Christmas. This movie asks viewers to consider how minor or major decisions might have changed the direction of their lives. In other words, What If?
Erin (Lori Loughlin) has always supported the career of her husband, Adam (Tom Cavanagh), a heart surgeon. Each year, she organizes his hospital’s Christmas charity gala, which gives her a sense of accomplishment and purpose. When Adam moves to another hospital, however, Erin’s planning and expertise is no longer needed.
Without that role, she increasingly regrets having given up her career in fashion design to support Adam’s. She wonders what would have happened had she pursued her career ambitions instead of setting them aside for her marriage. Eventually, and after being gifted a magical ornament, she wakes up in an alternative reality where she is a successful fashion designer.
These alternate-reality plot-lines aren’t new to Hallmark. What If Christmas uses this premise, though, to explore the common midlife challenge of evaluating the life we’ve built and whether it still makes room for parts of ourselves that we value.
The Psychology of What If
Psychologists call the process of mentally constructing alternatives to events that have already happened counterfactual thinking. Sometimes, we may imagine how things could have turned out better. This is called upward counterfactual thinking. Erin’s belief that life would have been better if she pursued her career is one example. Other times, we imagine how things could have been worse. This is downward counterfactual thinking. Erin learning, through living in her alternative reality, that pursuing her career meant never meeting Adam would be an example.
Neither type of counterfactual thinking tells us what actually would have happened had we made a different choice. An imagined life remains in the imagination. We can harness the power of counterfactual thinking to help us, though. Through reflections on past decisions, we may learn from previous mistakes to make better decisions in the future. Positive counterfactual thinking is when our imagined reality helps us understand something new or take action. When counterfactual thinking keeps our imagined reality on constant replay without gaining a new perspective, it can lead to anxiety or depression.
Erin becomes increasingly caught in believing that pursuing fashion would have given her an ideal life. Evaluating a career path is not in itself problematic. Erin could have realized that she missed having an outlet to express her creativity instead of feeling like she needed a wholly different life. That realization could have inspired her to seek out opportunities for creativity in her actual reality.
Unless Santa gives us a magical ornament, our past remains the same no matter how much counterfactual thinking we do. What we learn from it, however, can help us change our present, perhaps for the better.
When a Familiar Role No Longer Fits
Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson theorized the central challenge of middle adulthood as generativity versus stagnation. Generativity involves caring for others and contributing, creating, and nurturing something that will outlast us. Parenting, mentoring, teaching, and community work can all provide opportunities for contribution.
Erin’s charitable work for the hospital provides an example of generativity. When that role disappears, she wonders where to direct her skills and care and questions her place in the world. It becomes clear to viewers that she valued supporting Adam’s career, but it’s also clear that her needs weren’t fully being met. These feelings are worth considering, and this movie encourages that type of reflection. What If Christmas leaves viewers with a weighty question: What might the life you didn’t choose reveal about the life you still have the opportunity to create?
What Is the Imagined Life Asking for?
When a particular what-if keeps returning, consider the following questions:
- What attracts me to this imagined life?
- Which part of it could I pursue now?
- What support or changes would it require?
We may be surprised to find that we don’t want an entirely different life. We may want to be more creative, to mentor future generations, to learn new skills, or to be more independent. Identifying the need beneath the fantasy gives us a specific pathway forward instead of a general wish to undo our present life. We can’t know who we would have become, but we can ask what those imagined possibilities reveal about the choices we can still make today.
Hallmark vs. Psychology
Hallmark says: A magical glimpse of an alternative life can reveal unmet needs in the present.
Psychology says: Imagining other outcomes can help us learn and plan. Its usefulness depends on whether we have a healthy balance between informative self-reflection and unhelpful rumination.
Verdict: Halllmark offers a useful starting point. We don’t need a magical ornament to explore an unmet need; we can evaluate our past and the impact it has on our present at any time of year.
Sometimes, we don't want a different life as much as we want to recover a part of ourselves that we've forgotten.