59 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenIn a Holidaze
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Food and Meals
Food is a marker of Mae’s family traditions and investment in the holiday, and many of the scenes in the novel feature traditional dishes; in some cases, the group’s interactions with the food itself become the basis for a deeper exploration of Mae’s relationships and the group’s overall dynamics, especially when the time loop alters key details in each iteration. For example, once Mae realizes that she is repeating the holiday, she tries to prevent her father from cracking his tooth on Lisa’s inedible cookie bars. Even before Andrew knows about this mission, he reminds Mae, “[U]nlike Elise, who is a cooking goddess, Lisa is not, as we say, skilled in the kitchen” (48). Similarly, on her third trip through the holiday, Mae begins by avidly consuming cheese blintzes, impressing Andrew with her new dedication to embracing life. This moment illustrates his growing interest in her once she takes more initiative and grows less reserved, and this key shift sets the stage for their continued flirtation and romance. In the same timeline, Mae throws Lisa’s inedible cookie bars away and begins helping with breakfast preparations as part of her commitment to reconciling The Tension Between Childhood Nostalgia and Adult Responsibility.
Mae even finds herself enjoying the fairly inedible dinner that her brother and Theo make, partly because their efforts indicate that her campaign to inspire everyone to contribute to the holiday is having an impact. Later, in a souvenir shop, Mae and Andrew discuss her favorite holiday candy, peppermint Hershey’s kisses, leading Andrew to declare, “I will die on the White Chocolate Is Not Chocolate Hill” (223). In the novel’s climax, he also uses a trail of candy as part of his grand gesture to show that he forgives her for not telling him sooner about the time loop, demonstrating that he accepts her fully as the person she is.
Time Travel in Popular Culture
Mae eventually realizes that her predicament is a frequent theme in popular culture, as do those around her. When Mae first tells Benny about the time loop, he mentions the film Avengers: Endgame, which features time travel as the superheroes avert disaster for humanity. This early allusion mirrors Mae’s decision to concentrate more closely on saving the cabin and preserving family traditions than on improving her own happiness; this approach is proven incorrect when a tree branch falls on her after she disrupts the snowball fight. Additional pop culture references are made in the novel when Benny tries to explain Mae’s predicament to the others; he tells them that Mae is experiencing a “Groundhog Day like scenario” (232), directly referencing a famous film in which the main character’s time loop forces him to overcome his selfishness and build community, thereby proving himself worthy of connections and love.
This allusion reinforces Benny’s repeated insistence that Mae should pursue happiness and see what she learns in the process. With his help, Mae realizes that the more active changes she makes in her life, the better she feels, and this dynamic advances the novel’s thematic focus on The Interplay of Fate and Personal Choice. After her fight with Andrew regarding her kiss with Theo, Mae laments that she has not seen more time-travel movies, demonstrating that she is still relying on the supernatural to escape the lasting consequences of her own personal choices, even though she previously embraced the opportunity for radical change. Eventually, with help from her mother, Mae realizes that while she may never know how the time loop originated, she does “know what makes [her] happy—trusting [her]self” (263). In this spirit, Mae tells Andrew the truth about her feelings and is ready to accept his answer, embracing his agency along with her own. Their eventual reconciliation provides the novel’s requisite “happily ever after” conclusion and indicates that only by exercising her own agency is Mae able to resolve the conflicts in her life and move forward constructively.
Music and Art
The authors establish early that the novel’s core characters are drawn to fine art and other forms of creativity and self-expression. For example, Mae is an artist and a graphic designer, while her mother is a painter, and the crux of Mae’s existential crisis lies in the fact that her current job does not allow her to pursue her creative interests. When Andrew encourages her to consider quitting, Mae feels liberated upon taking his advice, and this dramatic decision helps her see the value in embracing spontaneity and actively directing the course of her life. Similarly, Andrew works in sound design at a major music venue, and Mae strongly associates him with songs; one of her their long embraces occurs while she listens to The Cure through his headphones, thinking, “I’ve heard Andrew sing this song a hundred times” (100). Elements of creative expression also permeate the novel’s descriptions, as when Mae compares being in Andrew’s embrace to hearing “a calming melody hummed at bedtime” (100). Though Mae is slow to accept Andrew’s romantic interest in her, these details indicate that her unacknowledged connection with Andrew is a core part of the answer to the time loop, and he is clearly a dominant factor in Mae’s search for meaning and happiness. Mae herself has a similar revelation when she and Andrew embrace to the music of Sam Cooke, finding an easy intimacy in the familiar song.
The connection between creativity and romance deepens in the novel’s third act, as Mae decides to bring Andrew proof of her feelings in the form of a painting. As she explains the meaning of the artwork, Mae realizes that Andrew is strumming the Sam Cooke song that they were listening to earlier, and she likens the music to a “warm burst of air” in the otherwise frigid conditions (278). Mae uses the painting to assure Andrew that no matter what timeline they occupy, he is what she has always wanted. The recurrence of art and creative endeavors is also featured in the Epilogue, as Mae has found a meaningful new job in graphic design; this development brings her happiness in her professional life and mirrors the personal happiness that she has found with Andrew. The authors thus posit that creativity is key to both personal and romantic success.
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