a christmas listicle romance
🎄❤️ blogging for the holidays ❤️🎅
Before we begin, my collaborative livestreaming project/platform/collective Is this THING on? is hosting a special one-night-only performance on December 14. I’ll be streaming alongside original THING members: Christopher Clary, Sarah Rothberg, and Bhavik Singh. We each invited an additional performer to join us: Chia Amisola, Maya Man, Darla Devour, and Herdimas Anggara. The event will go from 4:30-6:30 PM EST over on thing.tube. Find more information and RSVP here.
It’s December. My last rent check of the year has been popped in the mail and the gift guides are rolling in. I only really buy Christmas gifts for my immediate family, so I don’t think my seven-year-old nephew would fully appreciate a conceptual fragrance or a sustainably sourced robe. These gift guides are more indicative of the compiler’s taste and probably not what anyone you actually spend the holidays with would want. One year, I bought my dad a copy of The Mushroom at the End of the World, and he looked at it with such confusion and disappointment that I vowed to never buy a “cool” gift again.
In lieu of a gift guide, I’d like to present you with a holiday themed offering of my own: Molly’s Top 10 Christmas Movies. I’m not talking about actual Christmas movies like The Holiday or Love, Actually. I’m talking about the endless and rapidly growing genre of low-budget, made-for-TV Christmas movies that surface every year after Thanksgiving. You’ve maybe seen some of these featured on Netflix or the Hallmark Channel. Each year, networks and streaming services release more of these movies than anyone could consume. They all typically feature a holiday-themed romance and a main character that has to learn the real meaning of Christmas in order to throw a concert to save the farm that’s about to be foreclosed on. Often there’s a protagonist disillusioned with the holidays who has to visit their hometown for the first time in decades; they might run into an old flame or fall in love with the local bakery owner who has a candy cane obsession. Many of these movies involve magic, like a wish made on an everyday object imbued with the Christmas spirit or a meeting the real Santa undercover at a car wash.
For the past five years, my ritual has been to end the year watching as many of these movies as humanly possible. My friends joke that they’ll see me logging them on letterboxd and giving them all one star ratings, wondering why I do this to myself (I’ve since stopped rating altogether). I suppose I have a higher threshold for “bad” or “cheesy” content than most. Aside from finding the repetitive plotlines and sexless romance soothing, I look at them as cultural objects. Why are there so many? When did the Christmas movie explosion happen? It wasn’t always like this. Streaming has clearly played a role in their proliferation. Even platforms like Tubi are making their own Christmas movies. Why do so many of them feel almost pornographic? There’s something uncanny about the generic, hot cast members, the stilted dialogue, and the nondescript, cheap sets. Often, these low-budget movies are adaptations of romance novels minus the actual sex. Lifetime just announced that they will be premiering a Christmas movie that features a sex scene this year: A Cowboy Christmas Romance.
These movies are not created equal. Based on plot description and thumbnail alone, there is a spectrum of watchable to unwatchable that only the most discerning eye can pick up on. While I encourage anyone to click on whatever combination of mashed-up holiday words beneath a thumbnail of a couple wearing red and green that appears on their TV screen, I do have some suggestions. I’ll continue to trudge through the proverbial snow so you don’t have to.
This movie follows Krissy Kringle—played by the actress who plays Peyton in One Tree Hill—a boss babe who hates Christmas and resents her parents for naming her after Santa Claus. “You were named after a legend,” her dad says. She lives on Candy Cane Lane and gets an overwhelming amount of letters addressed to Santa every year. Safe to say, she’s OVER IT. She loses her job, which forces her to work as a mall elf, and she accidentally gets sent Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list. Now, she has dirt on everyone in town, but at what cost?!
Famous Cuban-American Christina Milian plays an Italian-American whose large family has no boundaries. They want her to move out of her apartment and give it to her sister who is having a baby. She receives a mysterious snowglobe in the mail that allows her to transport between a parallel universe that exists only inside the snowglobe and the real world. Obviously, she wants to escape her reality so she spends a little too much time hanging out inside the too-good-to-be-true winter wonderland. Things get sort of complicated when her two worlds collide. Also, Dr. Melfi plays her mom.
Another hit from ABC Family starring Melissa Joan Hart. A down-on-her-luck artist working as a waitress kidnaps a hot customer (Mario Lopez) in order to bring him home to her parents and make it seem like her life isn’t falling apart. “She’s holding him hostage, but he’s stealing her heart.” For fans of Buffalo 66.
The Knight Before Christmas, 2019
I love The Princess Switch movies as much as the next Netflix password-haver, but this one has to be my favorite Vanessa Hudgens flick. I’m a sucker for any movie that involves time travel. Here, a hunky medieval knight gets transported to the present day and everyone thinks he’s a guy with a concussion. The knight learns what a car is and Vanessa Hudgens learns how to love again.
Kristin’s Christmas Past, 2013
Another time travel movie! This time, Shiri Appleby travels back in time after drinking a magical bottle of champagne gifted to her by a man working at a liquor store. She visits her high school self in 1996—the last time she was home for the holidays—and poses as an NYU alum but somehow still gets folded into the family drama. This one has a sort of reverse 13 Going on 30 vibe, down to the figuring out you’ve been in love with your best friend all along plotline. Debby Ryan makes a split second (but not inconsequential) appearance.
I almost didn’t want to include Love Hard because it feels too obvious, but this is the best of what Netflix has to offer and is probably the most watchable of anything listed here. Basically, Nina Dobrev gets catfished on a dating app but doesn’t realize it until she goes to stay with the guy and his family for Christmas. In exchange for posing as this guy’s girlfriend, he helps her win over the actual person from the dating app pictures: a man who loves rock climbing. There’s a post #MeToo reimagining of the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” a candle-making subplot, and a lot of emphasis on the movie Die Hard being a Christmas movie. I realize I’m making it sound worse than it is now.
We’re going to go all the way in the opposite direction in terms of star power for this movie from the same year. Unlike all of the other movies I have listed so far, there’s not a single actor I recognize here. Usually, it’s a safe bet to watch a Christmas movie starring an actor you vaguely know, even if they were only a side character on Pretty Little Liars. In A Chance For Christmas, family vlogger Christina Chance wants to land a big brand partnership with a lifestyle company called Love Handles (unclear what they actually sell). She has to get “two million engagements” during her Christmas Eve livestream and is doomed to repeat it Groundhog Day-style until she gets it right.
Here’s another holiday movie with no recognizable actors. Haley, a work obsessed advertising executive who doesn’t care about Christmas, needs to land a toy company’s social media account. In order to do so, she must go to a Christmas camp, which is essentially a Christmas themed bed and breakfast that adults go to to get some sort of certificate by doing crafts. Phones are strictly forbidden and the owner has a hot son.
Annie Claus Is Coming To Town, 2011
Okay, back to being whimsical! I’m realizing that the plot of the Barbie movie isn’t so different from some of these Christmas movies. Annie, Santa’s daughter, decides to leave the North Pole and look for true love in California. Once she finds it, she will bring whoever it is back to the North Pole to take over the family business with her. Unfortunately, there’s an elf who is vying for her place in the bloodline and he hires an actor to trick her into falling in love with him and remaining stateside. It’s naughty (an actor from a personal injury lawyer commercial) vs. nice (a failing toy store owner). Who will win?
Last, but certainly not least, is this early aughts hit. Popular teen Lindsay wants to go skiing with her friends (and her crush) for the holidays instead of spending time with her family. She befriends a mall Santa, gives him a makeover, and then realizes he is the actual Santa Claus. They deliver presents together in a flying red convertible. The entire time she’s being chased by a sniveling little mall cop who seriously needs to get a grip. Apparently, there is another version of this movie where she has two dads but I watched the hetero version.
Fun!! I've seen way too many of these hahah. Would recommend On the 12th Date of Christmas , where app developers competing for a promotion fall in love while working on a Christmas scavenger hunt game (actually pretty good) and No Sleep 'Til Christmas, where two insomniacs can only fall asleep next to one another (so bad it's good). Honorable mentions are Catering Christmas and The Spruces and the Pines.
I was so excited when I saw you'd written about Christmas romcoms! I have also been watching a lot of them this year. I love the feeling of endlessness you get with them, knowing that none of them are likely to be good & indeed that's not really the point. I am trying to remember some to recommend... let's look at Plex for it. The Noel Diary was great, but maybe a little too well done? EXmas was fun (I esp enjoyed their depiction of what a game designer does). Just In Time For Christmas also fun, more time travel shenanigans & also it has Doc Brown in it. I'm excited to watch more of the Christmas in Evergreen series, which leans on the magic to the point that it feels like it could be remade as a horror film? ... I should copy my reviews from a Discord to Letterboxd really, keep track of what i've actually watched.