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    Hallmark Christmas Movies Are Falling for Europe

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    More and more of the cozy Christmas movies on Hallmark and Lifetime are set on the continent. But onscreen, it’s a Europe doused in holiday magic.Christmas is magical. Christmas is inescapable.And, according to an increasing number of holiday movies, it’s in Europe.Browse Hallmark and Lifetime’s channels, and you will find a Christmas in Rome. In Vienna. In Switzerland. In Scotland. In Notting Hill. We’re having a Belgian Chocolate Christmas. A jolly good Christmas. A merry Scottish Christmas and even a merry Swissmas. You can enjoy a Heidelberg holiday and a Joyeux Noel (that one’s in France).Europe, with its cobblestoned streets (a nightmare in heels), old buildings (no central heating) and Christmas markets (those can be as good as they look onscreen), provides the perfect setting for a magical holiday adventure.“Hallmark fans get to experience these incredible destinations through the eyes of our character,” said Ali Liebert, the director of one of the network’s 2023 offerings, “Christmas in Notting Hill.”In many of these films, an American girl is undervalued at her big city job. She leaves the city and finds a rugged local, who embodies all the wholesome values of a small town. Sometimes her love interest is a widower. Sometimes he has an adorable child, or he may have a dog. (If he lives in Scotland, the dog’s name may be Hamish.)In Netflix’s 2021 film “A Castle for Christmas,” a best-selling author (Brooke Shields) ends up in a Scottish village and falls for a local duke (Cary Elwes).Mark Mainz/NetflixCertain European spots have been deemed more appropriately Christmassy than others. (We’re yet to see “My Barcelona Christmas,” despite the December temperatures there being pretty similar to London.) In these films, Europe is awash with eligible princes from royal families presiding over countries with names like Aldovia or Cordinia, which you would be hard pressed to find on a map.And for those holiday movie fans expecting a white Christmas in England, it’s more likely you’ll get a drizzly one. The last time Britain saw a festive blanketing of snow for the holiday, the way Charles Dickens intended, was in 2010.But none of that matters. Christmas movies let you vicariously live your best European Christmas, which may be significantly better than the holidays experienced by actual Europeans.And as far as snow goes — there are visual effects for that.Hallmark is releasing 42 new holiday movies this year, with a catalog of many more, and shooting some in European locations “gives us more cultural traditions to dig into,” said Lisa Hamilton Daly, the head of programming at Hallmark Media. “Our audiences love to travel with us.”In “Christmas in Rome,” an American tour guide (Lacey Chabert) meets a business executive (Sam Page). Stefano Montesi/Crown Media United States LLCDaly is already looking ahead to next year’s Christmas, she said, adding that Hallmark crews will probably be returning to Europe for the network’s 2024 holiday movie slate.And for viewers, getting to Europe — whether it’s because of pandemic delays, high ticket prices or general travel stress during the holidays — has not gotten any easier.“U.S. audiences may not always be able to go to these exotic foreign lands,” said Dustin Rikert, the director of the new Hallmark film “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” which centers on estranged siblings in a castle in Scotland.American audiences seem to enjoy watching stories set in the beautiful Scottish countryside. In Netflix’s 2021 film “A Castle for Christmas,” a best-selling author (Brooke Shields) ends up in a Scottish village and falls in love with a local duke.In Lifetime’s 2020 film “Christmas at the Castle,” a big city girl is sent to the Scottish Highlands to find a rare fragrance. She, too, falls in love with a local.These stories and settings are pure escapism, according to David Lumsden and Toby Trueman, the director and an executive producer of “Christmas in Scotland,” a 2023 movie streaming on Plex and Xumo.Yes, “Merry Swissmas” is set in Switzerland.Lifetime“We never have white Christmases, it’s always a gray Christmas,” Trueman, who lives in Edinburgh, said. “This is not a realist film.”Lumsden has also directed other genres, including horror, and he has enjoyed the switch to holiday content. “My family rarely gets to see the stuff I do,” he said, because it’s “too scary for my niece or nephew.” Christmas movies, he added, can be watched by everyone.Movies set around the holidays have long been popular, and in the 2000s, festive romance films like “Love Actually” and “The Holiday” made big money at the box office, before joining films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Home Alone” in the rotation of classic holiday movies.Over the past few years, Hallmark and Lifetime have bet big on cheesy, formulaic Christmas movies with a guaranteed happy ending, releasing dozens of new titles every year.These movies’ predictable and cozy nature fuels their popularity. “The formula exists for a very good reason,” Daly said. “It makes people happy.”In “Jolly Good Christmas,” a Christmas present brings Anji (Reshma Shetty) and David (Will Kemp) together in London.Rob Baker Ashton/Hallmark MediaAt the end of a Christmas movie, you know that the beautiful Scotsman (or Germanic prince or English soccer star) will end up with the ambitious American blonde (or brunette). They will kiss — and nothing else! Hands where I can see them! — at the exact moment soft snowflakes start falling.Our American heroine may even make a permanent move to that drafty old castle without modern amenities. But I digress. What happens after the credits roll is not important. More

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      Day 25: That Time an Orthodox Jew Celebrated Christmas

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      The first and only time that Alex Edelman’s family celebrated Christmas, their tree was topped not by a star, but a teddy bear wearing a yarmulke.Mr. Edelman, who was 7 or 8 at the time — he doesn’t remember the exact year — was also wearing a yarmulke. All of his male family members were. Mr. Edelman, 33, grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Brookline, Mass., and he says his family’s one-night fling with Christmas, which he chronicled with withering precision in his recent Off Broadway comedy show “Just For Us,” was a thoroughly Jewish endeavor.The story has become an integral part of Mr. Edelman’s comedy routine: A non-Jewish friend of Mr. Edelman’s mother had a tragic year, and no one to celebrate Christmas with. So Mr. Edelman’s mother decided that, religion notwithstanding, she would do a mitzvah — the Jewish concept of a good deed — and invite her to celebrate with them. In order to make that happen, of course, she’d need stockings, cookies for Santa, and that ever-important tree.“So we had Christmas,” Mr. Edelman says in his act. “We did a pretty good job, for Jews. We went whole-hog, except no hog. Kosher Christmas.”By decking their halls, Mr. Edelman said, they were performing an essential Jewish act: welcoming the stranger into their home, with love and open hearts.On Christmas morning, Mr. Edelman and his younger brother opened presents with their parents and Kate, their non-Jewish friend, who had spent the night and gone to bed delighted by the celebration. The brothers then headed off to school, as the Jewish day school that they attended was not closed on Christmas Day. Later that evening, their father would get a phone call from the school principal, who was deeply concerned. The Edelman brothers, it seemed, had been telling other students that Santa Claus had visited their home. Why would the Edelmans allow Christmas into their life? Mr. Edelman’s father was quick to answer: Clearly, he told the school principal, you don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas.“It was a moment of great parenting. Not to give too much credit to my parents, but all credit to my parents,” Mr. Edelman said in an interview. “The only thing that is universally Jewish is intentionality. You cannot have Judaism without intention. And what’s so Jewish about this event is there was so much empathy, but also much intentionality, when my parents decided to do this.”These days, the story remains Mr. Edelman’s favorite comedic bit in his show, “because afterward people tell me their own stories of human kindness,” he said. “It highlights what I love about my Jewish values, with empathy as the true north. It’s a good demonstration of how Jewish values can be applicable, even when you’re celebrating Christmas.” More

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      How Well Do You Know Your Holiday Movies?

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      Between a murderous Santa wielding a sledgehammer and an elf throwing a rave in a corporate mailroom, Christmas movies seem to get more outlandish every year. How well do you know your festive films?
      Image credits: Hallmark Channel (“A Royal Corgi Christmas”); Bettmann/Getty Images (Queen Elizabeth II); Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock (the Bidens); Pool photo by Jonathan Buckmaster (Muick and Sandy mourning the Queen’s death); Netflix (“The Princess Switch”); Universal Pictures (“Violent Night”); Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (“Christmas in Montana”); Hulu (“Happiest Season”); Netflix (“Falling for Christmas”); Paramount Pictures (“Mean Girls”); Disney (“The Parent Trap”); Paramount Pictures (“Once Upon a Christmas”); Disney (“Noelle”); Hallmark Channel (“Hanukkah on Rye”); Universal Pictures (“Last Christmas”).
      Produced by Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. More

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      Day 22: A Very Bollywood Christmas

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      In my Indian American family, where no occasion passes without celebration, getting into the Christmas spirit means grooving to Bollywood music. Though none of our elders grew up celebrating Christmas, they’ve embraced it wholly, and when we come together for Christmas dinner at my in-law’s home in Los Angeles, everyone has a task. While the moms roast the nuts with chaat masala and the dads gather ’round the wine, my job is to sync my phone to a bluetooth speaker and play deejay. My father-in-law, Vrajesh Lal, the family’s patriarch, begins the evening with a full glass of pinot noir and a request for “something Christmas-y,” like “Elvis’ Christmas Album.” (Having immigrated from India to the U.S. in 1972, Vrajesh is a big fan of Elvis.) But when the nuts give way to Cornish game hens and cumin-crusted squash (for the vegetarians), he never fails to flag me down with a new directive: “Let’s put on some Bollywood, huh?” My playlist includes Bhangra-style covers of Christmas music, with beats that hail from north India, songs from the Bollywood Brass Band and some of my father-in-law’s favorite Bollywood hits. Even the King cannot compete with this family’s compulsion to celebrate Christmas with jams from the mother country.The album, “A Jolly Bolly Christmas,” features Bollywood and Bhangra versions of Christmas classics. Keda Records More

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      ‘The Big Mix’: Little Island’s 3-Week Party

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      The director Tina Landau knows firsthand how much the New York City waterfront has changed over the decades. In 1996, she did a production of Charles Mee’s “The Trojan Women: A Love Story” at the East River Park Amphitheater. “I remember going there, and we cleaned up syringes and condoms,” Landau said.She was speaking backstage at another riverside amphitheater, albeit in much improved conditions: at the public park Little Island in Manhattan, which opened last year at Pier 55 on the Hudson and where Landau is directing “The Big Mix,” a new performing arts festival through July 3. The roster features prominent names like Idina Menzel, Tonya Pinkins and Peppermint alongside poets and fire artists, neighborhood dance troupes and choirs, tap dancers and marching bands.“I wanted to focus on representation of as many kinds and types and ethnicities and abilities and genders,” Landau said.One of Little Island’s four artists in residence, Landau has come a long way since her days picking up trash before a show; she’s a member of the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, and was a Tony nominee for “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical.” But the inspiration behind “The Big Mix” came not so much from a high concept as from simply looking at the calendar.“I saw that Pride weekend was a week after Juneteenth and a week before July 4th,” Landau said. “I started thinking about what these holidays are: What do they mean to different people, and why do we celebrate them? So each show is in honor of, and an interrogation of, the holiday that falls on that weekend.”While she takes seriously the meaning of these commemorations, Landau also wants to entertain. “Let’s get a ton of different people in here and mash them up, and let it be sloppy and crazy and big and powerful and fun,” she said.From left, Zach McNally, Ianne Fields Stewart, Allan K. Washington and Marla Louissaint rehearsing at Little Island for a Pride Week performance. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesJoshua Henry (“Carousel,” “Waitress” and the upcoming Broadway run of “Into the Woods”) is the M.C. of the Juneteenth celebration, running through Sunday, with a lineup that includes Pinkins, the singer Mykal Kilgore, the Sing Harlem Choir and the dancer Brinae Ali. Henry is fully on board with Landau’s big-tent approach.“It’s my job to make sure everyone’s having a great time,” he said in a video chat. “As I become more active on social media, people are starting to see my personality more, and I guess I come across as a fun-loving guy, which is pretty accurate,” he added, chuckling.Henry also suggested potential guests to Landau, who was all ears. “I wanted to find a way to turn over the space to voices other than my own,” she said. “For Juneteenth, for instance, I’ve invited people, but I’ve also been very open to what they want to say and how they want to say it. We’re in a very charged and thankfully transformative time, culturally.”The L.G.B.T.Q. Pride program (June 23-25) provided Landau an opportunity for some course-correction, decades after her 1994 show “Stonewall, Night Variations,” which also happened to be on a New York pier. Looking back on that show, Landau believed it wasn’t as inclusive as it should have been — leaving out people of color, homeless youth and transgender women in particular, who were all “part of that moment in time.” This time around, she said, “I wanted to honor those that I, in some way, had left out.”That’s why Peppermint, the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” runner-up, seemed like a great addition as M.C. But because she could host only a couple of the Pride shows, Landau turned to the costume designer and activist Qween Jean to handle the other two. “I had been following her, and I thought, ‘She’s the real deal, she’s out there doing the work,’” she said.Another participant in the Pride celebration is the choreographer James Alsop, who had been wanting to collaborate with Landau since meeting her in 2019. “She could have said, ‘I have a sneaker full of poop,’ and I’d be like, ‘I’ll choreograph it!’” Alsop said with a laugh.Fortunately, the director had a better offer — to choreograph a group number to Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” for the festival, despite being deep in rehearsal for “The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical,” which premieres next month in Chicago.Jose Llana, right, and Brandon Contreras rehearsing a duet in front of an unbeatable backdrop, the Hudson River.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesOne challenge was to concentrate on the dancing and not the spectacular vista right behind the stage. “Let the backdrop do what it does and just be beautiful, and let me not think too much about it, because then I won’t really focus on the movement and the dance and the joy that I want the audience to feel,” Alsop said. “I just want to exude nothing but radiance and light.”Rounding out the festival is the Independence Day show (June 30-July 3), hosted by Faith Prince — a beloved Broadway star who won a Tony for “Guys and Dolls” in 1992 and starred in Landau’s revival of “Bells Are Ringing” about a decade later.At first, though, the actress worried that she wouldn’t be a good pick for the diverse group of performers, which includes the samba-reggae marching band Fogo Azul NYC, the poet Denice Frohman and the Heidi Latsky Dance company.“Tina said, ‘Oh no, you’re quirky in your own way,’” Prince said on the phone. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I have age on me, which is another factor.’ Just when you think you’re in your prime, they want to put you out to pasture!”Prince is familiar with at least one of the performers in the Independence Day show, the Broadway regular Judy Kuhn, but she’s particularly excited by the mix of professional artists and community members, similar to the approach in a production of “The Tempest” she co-directed at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in 2019.“We used a lot of different groups around the city, and it was thrilling,” Prince said. “It brought so many different communities together, and they were all cheering for each other. I’m really excited that’s what will happen here.”The Big MixThrough July 3 at Little Island, Pier 55, Manhattan; littleisland.org. More

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      Better Than Besties: Why Gay Holiday Films Matter

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReporter’s NotebookBetter Than Besties: Why Gay Holiday Films MatterThis season’s movies with queer characters may be a largely chaste affair, but their comforting formulas also tell L.G.B.T.Q. viewers that they are seen.Heath (Juan Pablo Di Pace), left, and Wyatt (Peter Porte) get romantic in “Dashing in December,” on the Paramount Network. Credit…Paramount NetworkDec. 18, 2020, 12:59 p.m. ETI gasped so loudly, it sounded like Judy Garland had shown up at my Christmas party.It happened during “Dashing in December,” a new holiday film on the Paramount Network about two men who fall in love on a ranch. I involuntarily inhaled as Wyatt, a stuffy venture capitalist, locked lips with Heath, the sweetheart ranch hand. Watching it made me feel like Santa put me at the top of his nice list.I’m gay. I kiss men. Never at a ranch, once at a Denny’s. But there was something so surprisingly renegade about the movie’s smooch. Leading men just don’t kiss each other in the conservative fraternity of holiday TV movies.They do now. As I recently reported, this year there are six new holiday-themed films with gay and lesbian leading characters, including “Happiest Season” (Hulu), “The Christmas House” (Hallmark Channel) and “The Christmas Setup” (Lifetime). In this chaste genre, that’s a milestone.Nia Fairweather thinks so, too. She plays an Afro-Latina woman of fluid sexuality in the new indie “A New York Christmas Wedding,” now on Netflix.“There’s a list — a list — where there never was a list,” Fairweather said. “That lets us know this year has been different.”This change is significant for me, a holiday movie fan whose biggest gay Christmas memory is George Michael gazing lovingly at Andrew Ridgeley on the cover of the Wham! album “Last Christmas.” But as I reported the article, I wondered if I was overstating the arrival of a New Queer Christmas Cinema. Will we look back on horrible 2020 — as I think we will — as the year that finally gayed up Christmas movies?I called up holiday movie aficionados to ask: Is this a big deal?Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis in “Happiest Season” on Hulu.Credit…Hulu, via Associated Press“This is a big deal,” replied Joanna Wilson, the author of several books about Christmastime entertainment. “Queer people have been bosses and co-workers and siblings of the main characters. Being the central romance is very exciting and comes not a moment too soon.”Blake Lee, who stars with his husband, Ben Lewis, in “The Christmas Setup,” framed it as an answer to a chaotic 2020.“We are four years into a presidency that has attacked the L.G.B.T.Q. community and projected hate,” Lee said. “I feel like these writers with these stories were like, now’s the time.”What holiday films provide — nostalgia, predictable formulas and an escape from real-world adversities like Covid-19, bankruptcy, bigotry — can be especially comforting to queer people, said Michael Varrati, the screenwriter of several holiday films, including the new “Christmas With a Crown.”“Movie Christmas is a lot different than real Christmas,” Varrati said. “Not everybody has a great relationship with their family or has pristine memories of yesteryear.” In holiday movies, he added, queer people “get to live in the Christmas they always wanted or didn’t get to have.”Jake Helgren told me he wrote and directed “Dashing in December” as an Americana romance and a “love letter to the ending” he wanted in “Brokeback Mountain.” Lawrence Humphreys, the film’s production designer, said the set was a teary mess as he and other crew members, straight and gay, watched the leading men kiss.“We knew what we created was something beautiful,” said Humphreys, who has worked on several Christmas films. “It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever been a part of and the one I’m most proud of.”L.G.B.T.Q. holiday entertainment has roots in the days when the word “queer” landed with a punch to the face. Performers surreptitiously conveyed stereotypical gayness — through winks, camp, sass, frippery — that was evident to in-the-know audiences but sailed over others’ heads. Liberace’s television show featured a Christmas episode in 1954. Paul Lynde starred in “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a 1977 ABC special. That same year, “All in the Family” ran groundbreaking Christmastime episodes about the murder of Edith Bunker’s friend Beverly LaSalle, who refers to herself as a transvestite. (She was played by Lori Shannon, the drag stage name of Don McLean.)L.G.B.T.Q. characters are now regulars on holiday-themed TV. But until this year, queer leads in holiday movies were few, relegated to low-budget indies like “Too Cool for Christmas” (2004), which was also released in a straight version, and “Make the Yuletide Gay” (2009). Supporting queer characters were mostly on the sidelines and white. That changed this year, as actors of color took on leading roles, including Fairweather, who is Afro-Caribbean, and Juan Pablo Di Pace, the Latino actor who plays Heath in “Dashing in December.” Transgender characters and actors are still rare, though.Ben Lewis, left, and Blake Lee in “The Christmas Setup” on Lifetime.Credit…Albert Camicioli/LifetimeSo is sex. Couples of all orientations rarely get heavier than a kiss in mainstream holiday fare. “Dashing in December” is a little more sexually adventurous, and by adventurous I mean a scene in which Wyatt, in just underwear, encounters a wet Heath in a towel. By the chaste standards of holiday rom-coms, “Dashing in December” is “Cruising.”And yet — it’s not. What you won’t see in these new films are activists, leathermen, butches or foul-mouthed drag queens. That’s not the Lifetime or Hallmark brand, so that’s no shock. But that’s what happens with assimilation. If gay people want straight people to believe our love deserves a holiday movie, don’t be surprised when straight people expect that movie to look like theirs.To counter the new gay sweetness, I binged renegade holiday movies about queer people who are raunchy, vulgar, camp, deranged. Or as BenDeLaCreme, the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star, put it: “the beautiful, bizarre things that queer people exposed themselves to when they had to search harder.” BenDeLaCreme is doing her part with a saucy new holiday special on Hulu with the “Drag Race” Season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon.Whatever the opposite of “The Christmas House” is, I watched it. There was “Naked City: A Killer Christmas” (1998), a Peter Bogdanovich film that used the fear of an Andrew Cunanan-style gay serial killer in service of a lurid thriller. On Amazon, the ensemble dramedy “Some of My Best Friends Are …” (1971) was set on Christmas Eve at a bustling Greenwich Village gay bar, featuring moving performances from Rue McClanahan and Candy Darling. (This paper called it “a very sad gay movie.”)The value in these films — as grim and mirthless as they may seem — is that they paved the way for “Happiest Season.” They are historical benchmarks showing that L.G.B.T.Q. performers and creators made Christmas entertainment because — surprise! — they loved Christmas, despite the Scrooges who said they didn’t belong there.My binge ended with “Letters to Satan Claus,” a new horror satire on Syfy about a girl who misspells her letter to St. Nick and instead summons the Angel of Death. Featuring a same-sex subplot, a trans actor (Xavier Lopez) and a nonbinary Santa creature, it’s Christmas counterprogramming at its queerest.Yet Mike Zara, who wrote the film, seemed perfectly Hallmark as he talked about what inspired the story.“It’s about finding joy through tragedy and darkness,” he said. “That sounds corny, but I wanted to talk about all the scars we carry with us. We can embrace them but also not live in that darkness forever.”Sounds like a New Year’s resolution to me.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More