In a ritzy suburban home outside Nashville with a turret, a wine cellar, and an anachronistic Tuscan motif, 55 of Santa’s helpers are spending the already humid Christmas morning (here, every morning is Christmas morning) building lighting rigs, ensuring the nutcrackers flanking the front doors are symmetrical, drinking bad coffee, and hanging up tinsel, wreaths, and a large banner welcoming everyone to “Santa Bootcamp.”
I’m standing a few feet away from Melissa Joan Hart, who graduated from Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Lifetime Christmas-movie lead to Lifetime Christmas-movie director. Santa Bootcamp will be her third Christmas movie in the director’s chair (her most recent, Feliz NaviDAD, stars Mario Lopez as a widowed high-school principal who has lost his Christmas spirit), and she has only 16 days to make the holiday magic happen. So “Action!” she calls, and a bubbly woman dressed as an elf (What We Do in the Shadows’ Marissa Jaret Winokur) throws her arms open and says, “Welcome, new campers!” to a group of smiling background actors. It’s hard to make out the dialogue over the sound of cicadas reminding us that it’s still summer. A bald crew member in a black T-shirt aims a leaf blower at Winokur, and her Santa Bootcamp sign-up forms swirl into the air as if shaken in a snow globe. Then it’s “Cut!” and time to reset the stack of papers to do it all over again.
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