The movie's cast features a number of thesps which were well known from New Zealand television such as Will Hall, Xavier Horan and Sia Trokenheim.
"Most Christmas movies are set in the Northern Hemisphere, so I thought we really needed to change that and to have our kids see what they do at Christmas time," said the film's director Tony Simpson. "Beaches and barbecues and jandals and shorts and hats and swimming, all that sort of carry-on."
This Kiwi Christmas movie was made with investment from Kiwibank, private investors and the New Zealand Film Commission. Madman Entertainment distributed the film in Australia and New Zealand whilst international sales are handled by Scandinavian sales agency The Yellow Affair.
The beach cricket match sequence was shot in two days.
Veteran Finnish actor Kari Vaananen, who plays Santa Claus in 'Kiwi Christmas' (2018), previously co-starred in another Yuletide movie about a decade earlier, portraying Santa's accomplice the carpenter Iisakki in the Finnish feature film 'Joulutarina' (aka 'Christmas Story' (2007) which has been described as ''the touching story of how Santa Claus came to be Santa.''