My personal addition to Jenny Nicholsonâs A Christmas Prince theory
This morning I decided to watch some of the Today show as I do on very rare occasions. While watching, I saw one segment in particular that piqued my interest. The segment can be found here.
The segment is about the sudden explosion of Christmas media by writer/journalist Karen Schaler, notable for being the writer of A Christmas Prince. While watching it, I reflected back to the Jenny Nicholson aka @spiderjewel video about the movie and its sequel. And then I realized, the world in A Christmas Prince isnât just a dystopia.
Aldovia is an introspective representation of its creator, Karen Schaler.
In order to keep to the spirit of Jennyâs original video, I put my explanation into a short numbered list.
1. âChristmasâ Karen
In order to understand how A Christmas Prince is introspective, we need to understand the creator.
Karen Schaler, after releasing three Christmas movies and three Christmas books in the same year, garnered the title of âChristmas Karen.â But her history with Christmas has deeper roots than that.
In the video, she explains that her great aunt was born on Christmas day, and her name was Merry Christmas Day. With this fact, Karen believes that the Christmas spirit is deeply rooted into her own personal being.
This ties into the royal family of Aldovia, with them having an almost obligatory need to celebrate Christmas in every part of their lives, and in the lives of their countryâs citizens. The best example of this is Prince Richard, who, like Karenâs great aunt, was born on Christmas day. The very idea of having Christmas be integral to the lifestyles of the royal family shows how Karen projects herself into the Christmas Prince story. But thatâs not the only aspect of Karen that she uses in the story.
2. Christmas 24/7
Itâs very interesting how throughout the Today segment, Karen emphasizes her imagination where itâs Christmas year-round. She wants to imagine herself in a fantasy where itâs Christmas 24/7. Sound familiar?
Aldovia is a physical manifestation of her dream, an alternate universe where itâs perpetually Christmastime. Of course Aldovia canât be a Christmas-eccentric dystopia without the âdystopiaâ part. Which leads into my final point...
3. Troubling times and financial crises
As Aldovia acts as a playing out of Karenâs fantasies, it also acts as a form of escapism. She compares trying to drown out the troubles of real life by means of Christmas as going down a rabbit hole which she decided to never leave.
And so Aldovia is used as a getaway of realityâs problems. But it doesnât stay as a harmless utopia for long. It starts to tear at the seams. The world is riddled with deception, facades, and wrongness. What is supposed to be a cheerful sleigh ride ends up being a sleigh ride through deserted plains almost as barren and undesirable as Antarctica. What is supposed to be a joyous coronation ends up being a revelation involving fraud and a lifetimeâs worth of lies. Even in the sequel, the country is plagued with a financial crisis (although Karen wasnât involved in the making of the second movie, but it still feels true to the themes of the original).
Aldovia is a horrifying romanticized representation of how the escapism of Christmas canât suppress the constant struggles of reality. Merry Christmas!



















