12 dates of christmas

How it works

Kate, played by Amy Smart, is set up on a blind date with Miles, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, on Christmas Eve. She is still angled toward an old relationship and treats the evening as an obstacle. The day resets. She gets a run of Christmas Eves — the title’s twelve — to stop using other people as scenery. James Hayman directed. The film premiered on 11 December 2011 in ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas block.

The engine is the same as Groundhog Day: one date, many attempts, a person who has to change before the calendar will. Kate’s job in advertising, her father, a neighbour, and the man she keeps standing up all sit inside the loop. Miles is written as a widower trying to start again. The plot does not require you to believe in magic so much as to watch someone fail a social test until she passes it.

Running time is about ninety minutes. It is a television movie, not a theatrical epic. Jordin Sparks’s “Angels Are Singing” is the theme. If a listing shows a later film with a similar title and different leads, read the cast. Titles in this genre repeat. Amy Smart and Mark-Paul Gosselaar are the pair for this one.

What the twelve dates are for

Each reset is a chance to keep the same appointments and spend them differently: the date, the family obligation, the stranger who needed a civil answer the first time. The joke is that Christmas Eve already contains more than one kind of duty. Kate cannot win the day by collecting Miles like a prize at the end of a boardwalk. She has to notice the other names on the day.

That is why the film sits next to searches for the twelve days of Christmas and for dating in December. It borrows the number twelve and a feast-eve setting. It does not teach Epiphany. It does not book a table. If you wanted the liturgical twelve days, they start on 25 December. If you wanted a rom-com about repeating 24 December, this is the tape.

Title: 12 Dates of Christmas. Premiere: 11 December 2011, ABC Family, inside 25 Days of Christmas. Leads: Amy Smart as Kate, Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Miles. Device: Christmas Eve repeats until Kate grows a conscience and a better romance.

Shape: television film, about an hour and a half. There is also later development news of other holiday pictures with “twelve dates” in the title. Those are other productions. This page is the 2011 film people still stream under the short name. Match director and cast before you hit play on a thumbnail that only says “12 Dates.”

Watching it as a holiday film

It is gentle. It is also built on a woman being told, for twelve nights, that she is the problem. That can play as a lesson or as a scold, depending on your patience for the genre. Children who can follow a time loop will follow this one. Nothing here is a substitute for a church service or for an actual blind date you still have to attend once.

If you are watching because you are lonely in December, the film will offer the usual cure: notice the person in front of you. If you are watching because you typed the wrong twelve, pause and check whether you wanted lords a-leaping. Both uses of twelve are seasonal. Only one of them resets at midnight.

A dozen Christmas Eves will not help if you keep ordering the same person off the evening. When the credits end, the civil date has not looped. Christmas Eve is 24 December; Christmas Day is 25 December. In 2026 those dates are a Thursday and a Friday. You get each of them once. The movie is the rehearsal.