In mainstream America, the end of the year has become the ultimate time for family gatherings, particularly for those who celebrate Christmas. The thought of cozying up in the cold weather with loved ones has caused the holiday season to become a major target for the production of homey feel-good films. Hallmark remains the most iconic and famous production studio with their countdown to Christmas series that has been running for over decade, drawing audiences all over the country. Hallmark has become so iconic that the name itself has become a genericized trademark and any cheesy feel-good holiday film colloquially gets branded a ‘Hallmark movie’. But outside of this one studio, plenty of others have tried making holiday films meant to be enjoyed at family gatherings. While Christmas movies have been marketed as a staple for the stereotypical American family, some of the major critiques this style of movie has encountered have been related to diversity or the lack thereof. Holiday films tend to feature exclusively upper-middle-class, white, “traditional” families celebrating Christmas in small town America. In recent years, there have been efforts to include more diverse casts and storylines to represent a broader audience like introducing Hanukkah Hallmark films, which feels like an oxymoron, like Double Holiday, or else featuring queer families and relationships like The Christmas House. However, while moving to diversify the holiday canon, there have come new challenges like fitting these “nontraditional” stories into very traditional cookie-cutter Hallmark plot formulas. However, particularly looking at queer cinema, a genre that historically does not pair well with the perfect cozy home life, creating queer holiday films has the potential to present new challenges or provide opportunities to paint the genre in a new way.
While Hallmark has been featuring queer side characters for over ten years, it has only been in the past five or so years that holiday films have started fully focusing on queer families or relationships as the center of a film. Given, not all of these representations have been healthy and many have strayed into being fully problematic, feeding into negative stereotypes that have haunted queer cinema for years. Historically, many queer films are dramatic and generally negative where the tension in the film is focused on homophobia presenting challenges like hate crimes, gay bashing, or self-loathing. Queer holiday films were not spared from these harmful tropes. For example, Robert Downey Jr.’s character in the 1995 movie Home for the Holidays is looked down upon and treated poorly by his family members for being gay. However, after almost thirty years, we should hope that these homophobic and traumatic central storylines are a thing of the past but with representation of any marginalized group, it seems there comes with it a painful learning curve.
Due to the nature of the genre, holiday films usually revolve around family relationships and the drama that can arise within them. Navigating family spaces after being away for some time at college or living independently is often a prime setting for a queer story with someone returning to a place that kept them in one box. The coming of age trope of shedding an old self in favor of a more authentic one is used time and time again in queer films, holiday or otherwise. One of the first holiday films that featured a queer protagonist, the 2009 film Make the Yuletide Gay was exactly that. When college student Gunn, who is out to everyone except those in his hometown, returns for Christmas he completely changes his mannerisms to appear straight and please his family. Because Gunn is not openly discriminated against and hated by his family, Make the Yuletide Gay feels like a bit of a step up from Home for the Holidays, but Gunn’s personal internalized homophobia and general attitude around sexuality still leaves much to be desired. The tension of ‘hiding a secret’ in queer films where a character is not out to their families, even when the climax includes loving acceptance, still seems far from encompassing a queer story, painting it as though a queer person’s life begins and ends with coming out.
Most notably, before its release in 2020, Happiest Season was expected to be a hit as one of the first mainstream lesbian-focused holiday movies, starring Kristen Stewart no less! While the movie received generally positive reviews, it didn’t escape the notice of many how troublesome the premise was. When Harper brings her girlfriend Abby home for the holidays for the first time, it isn’t until the couple is on their way that Harper drops the news that she is not even out to her parents and pleads for Abby to help her keep up the facade. While some level of self-censorship is common in any family, particularly for queer people who may not be fully out, instigating the drama in the movie by forcing Abby back into the closet combined with the general immature way that Harper treats the whole situation feels… icky. While Happiest Season is far from the worst representation of queer holiday romance, it failed to live up to the hype it promised queer audiences. So that begs the question, what kinds of tropes should be used to make a good queer holiday film?
Rather than having stories like Happiest Season and Make the Yuletide Gay represent the queer holiday experience, why not integrate more lighthearted tropes? The nature of Hallmark style movies is to invoke nostalgic and pleasant feelings so rather than having that come in the form of a family accepting a gay child, why not it be more towards a budding relationship or else some domestic bliss? Luckily, this seems to be exactly the direction holiday film creators have been headed in the past few years with the 2019 film Season of Love which follows three very different queer couples around the holiday season, and Single All The Way which features the classic fake dating to lovers trope.
Just this year, the Hallmark channel has already released two films featuring queer relationships; Christmas on Cherry Lane and Friends & Family Christmas. Friends & Family Christmas is fake dating to lovers between photographer Dani and lawyer Amelia to appease Dani’s family, who makes a surprise visit over the holidays. Then Cherry Lane took views through time showing the same house on Cherry Lane in three different generations with slightly interlocking families, the 2023 family being Mike and Zian, a couple looking to foster a child on Christmas Eve. The nice thing about the representation in both of these films is that the tension of the movie was focused on outside factors or other plot points rather than that the protagonists were gay. While being queer is a unique experience and there does need to have healthy portrayals of this exploration, everyone deserves to see themselves represented in some thoughtless domestic bliss or a fun rom-com.
It is very promising that in the past few years, movies like Single All The Way and Christmas on Cherry Lane have made an appearance bringing with them fully cringe-worthy plots while still giving much needed representation to a community that has suffered through so many painful portrayals. Oftentimes the only way that queer characters have been portrayed has been through forced outing, self-loathing, or other forms of homophobia only to be resolved with a warm and fuzzy acceptance from an individual’s family, putting so much tension on the ‘otherness’ of an identity. However, it feels like the best kind of representation truly is casual representation, just showing people going through all the ups and downs of romantic and familial relationships rather than highlighting the more painful and ‘other’ parts of the queer experience. With even the original Hallmark channel getting in on showing the awkward and cringy queer stories with Christmas on Cherry Lane and Friends & Family Christmas, it will be interesting to see if the trend continues in future holiday seasons.
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