Hallmark Channel closes out Countdown to Christmas 2025 with a heartfelt family love story that would have been at home on Hallmark Mysteries if it was still doing Miracles of Christmas. In The Christmas Baby, Hallmark staples Ali Liebert and Katherine Barrell play married couple Erin and Kelly, whose idyllic DINK life gets knocked off its axis when a baby boy is rolled into the shop where Erin works and left behind with a note pleading with them to take care of him.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the request unearths a host of emotions as the women vacillate between wanting to keep him, being terrified to, and then equally terrified not to. As daughters of large families, both have come to appreciate their compact but very full life and they soon face all the questions of whether they’re still enough for each other without a child, and will they lose each other or bump each other down the roster of affection if they take on parenthood, which was a table-stakes decision they agreed not to do when they married.
With a baby dropped right in front of them, a sympathetic children’s services worker in Betty (a superb Barbara Niven), a surprisingly kind neighbor (Robert Wisden, a forever favorite) and both their mothers (Caitriona Murphy and Rebecca Staab, who I would watch in their own film) fully on board to help and living nearby — along with a pretty large crew of extended friends and families, it’s not a question of how can they do this, but how can they not.
Liebert and Barrell are fantastic together as a couple who face a new test in their relationship and come together to really look at who they were when they made a choice for a certain life and who they want to be going forward as they redefine in their hearts and heads what makes a family.
Director Eva Tavares, a Make Her Mark alumni, helms a script by Topher Payne (who wrote Liebert’s A Gift for Christmas and A Christmas to Cherish) in her first feature for Hallmark and does a lovely job setting the quiet, comfortable palette and tone throughout. I love that Tavares, Liebert, and Barrell are all hyphenate actress-directors (Barrell also starred in the first Make Her Mark film, Shifting Gears, for Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe), and the collective female gaze of their collaboration here is apparent throughout.
In their hands, what could be chaotic and frenetic instead becomes soft and gentle. In many ways, it’s a counterpoint to the Three Wise Men films (and that’s not at all a dig, which you’ll understand when you watch). Instead of playing for comedy (hence the Miracles of Christmas mention above), it leans into the poignancy of a mother making the decision to surrender her child, and the chosen parents becoming who she hoped they would be after she entrusts them with her son. It’s a warm, loving way to cap out the holiday season.
The Christmas Baby premieres Saturday December 20th, at 10 pm/9c on CTV Life in Canada and Sunday, December 21st, at 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Channel. The premiere will also be streaming Sunday on various outlets in the US and the next day on Hallmark+ in the US. Here’s a sneak peek.
Photos courtesy of Paulina Stevens for Hallmark Media; video courtesy of Hallmark Media.
