Christmas Mountain

• Directed by Pierre De Moro
• 1981

A cowboy unable to pay for his meal is thrown in jail and in exchange for being released he takes some goods to an isolated family on a mountain.

Christmas Mountain (titled on YouTube as Christmas Mountain: The Story of a Cowboy Angel) is one of those suggestions that popped up on YouTube. Truthfully I never heard of it until then but considering any Western with Christmas in it let alone one with Christmas at the center is extremely rare so I decide to give it a look.

The narrative is family friendly on the extreme side. It tries to go after deeper things but doesn’t get too deep perhaps to play it safe. It touches on bigotry and the spirit of the season and doing charitable good to make yourself feel better and not because it is the right thing is wrong.

Some of the narrative attempts to borrow from the Christmas story in that there is an immigrant family living all alone in the mountains needing help. Or at least tries to do that. The Holy Family were not a group of immigrants. They were traveling to take part in a census from where they actually lived. People seem to get that wrong all too often.

Our main cowboy Gabe Sweet (Mark Miller) is a ranch hand looking for work who finds himself in the crosshairs of the law when he attempts to put a food bill on credit and the owner calls the sheriff. As a way to get out of jail on Christmas he agrees to take some old clothes and bad food up to this family. He knows exactly what he’s doing but he does it anyway because who wants to spend your Christmas in jail?

Slim Pickens plays his angel friend Murf who really doesn’t need to do too much to his pal as he already sees the right way to go. The addition of an angel character could’ve been good but there is no inexplicable Christmas miracle the whole way through. In fact the story probably would’ve worked better without Slim Pickens showing up as Murf. His inclusion stretches things out but ultimately took away from the narrative as it removed time to craft a genuinely impactful transition for Gabe. Gabe changes because he sees the kindness and dignity of the family he was sent to deliver the crap to. They are poor but they are honest and hard-working and faithful individuals.

The message is pretty heavy handed and served up to the audience with all the subtlety of a baseball to the head. Faith and kindness will pull you through. You should do things because they are the right thing and not because you feel some obligation to do so.

The irony of these people who are not originally from where they are now calling the Mexican family foreigners is not highlighted. Christmas Mountain tries to allude to the attitude of the locals being because of racism but they come off as just insensitive jerks. And that is mostly because any racially tinged comments end once Gabe is freed from jail. From there it switches to Gabe not wanting to mix with sheep people (as this Mexican family tend sheep) because he is a cattle man. That was just…odd. I know what they were trying to do but it was just really silly. They should have kept being direct.

Christmas Mountain is something you can watch with your kids and use to teach them a lesson but it’s not something that has a great deal to watch solo be you a Western fan or a general viewer. Ultimately this is not worth it.