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Production on the first Christmas film, due for a US release in December 2023, will begin in just a few weeks, in January. This was announced by Variety magazine Hallmark Channel, which plans for next year to surpass the 40 Christmas-themed movies produced and aired in 2022, making it the most-watched cable channel during the holiday in the United States. The film is titled A Biltmore Christmas and the protagonists are Bethany Joy Lenz and Kristoffer Polaha, actors who are not well known to the general public but have a solid curriculum of themed films. Lenz has acted in other Christmas films that never made it to Italy, such as Poinsettias for Christmas, Five Star Christmas and An Unexpected Christmas; Polaha in Rocky Mountain Christmas, Double Holiday and A Dickens Of a Holiday.
A Biltmore Christmas is a good example of how Christmas movies have changed in recent years as the American entertainment industry discovered that the demand for this content was greater than previously thought. Christmas movies produced in the US have doubled from 2016 to 2022 and quadrupled from 2011 to now. An increase made possible not only by cable channels, pay channels received through a decoder and the birth of new streaming platforms, but also by a different approach to the idea of Christmas cinema.
In the past, the selected stories were more varied, different genres and could approach Christmas from different angles, but above all they should also have a lasting success outside of the Christmas season. Today, however, films are easier to make and less risky, have very small budgets, and have repetitive structures and themes. They are almost exclusively romantic comedies, meant to be seen only once and with many visual Christmas-themed elements (snow, decorations, families, dinners, sweaters with Greek motifs).
What makes a film a Christmas film?
The actual definition of “Christmas Movie” is not obvious. In the USA, where the production of Christmas music and films is much more firmly rooted than in Italy, the question of which elements characterize it has been raised for years. The simplest answer, namely the presence of Christmas, is correct, but it collides with the paradox of Crystal Trap (Die Hard in the original) being considered a Christmas film even if it’s only slightly set during the holidays (the thing is little mentioned and is marginal compared to the plot, while in the second chapter it becomes a bit more important to die (58 minutes). Many Christmas films only show the celebrations in a few scenes and it is often more the visual tradition that qualifies them. This was the case in Italy with the first Star Wars trilogy, which was broadcast on generalist channels for several years during the holidays, or it is still the case today with An armchair for two.
Gender of affiliation is also not a discriminating factor. In the Name of God, a well-known western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, is a Christmas film, as is Gremlins, a horror film. What is more important is the way in which a film promotes, questions or criticizes moral values and themes that we usually associate with Christmas in its overall plot and staging. What is less characteristic, however, is the use of Christmas as a backdrop to give a tone to a film that tells something different. This is why Crystal Trap is a Christmas movie because it’s about a family reunion (a man going to Los Angeles for the holidays tries to reconnect with his ex-wife who is being held captive by terrorists) while Batman Tim Burton, which is set entirely during the Christmas holidays but isn’t tied to a Christmas theme, doesn’t fall into that category.
In Italy, for decades, the only traditional form of Christmas cinema was the latter, that is, comedies that were defined as Christmas because they appeared during the holidays, but were then only marginally connected to Christmas and were based more than anything else on the repetition of a well-established tradition, such , which have been defined as cinepanettoni.
The new Christmas movies
According to Bloomberg, 150 Christmas movies were released in theaters or on platforms this year in the United States. Some of these belong to classic Christmas cinema, such as A Quiet and Violent Night, which while suggested as innovative because it tells of a violent Santa Claus who defeats a gang of kidnappers with his fists and butts, is actually a modified, expanded and for mom adults, I missed my plane!. For the most part, however, the new Christmas films are operations with very rapid consumption, with no idea of subsequent exploitation, designed for just one season, with the awareness that more will arrive for the next.
– Also read: Christmas movies always work
They are cheap films that do not require advertising costs and where everything from writing to editing can be done quickly, not only because high quality is not required, but also because the repeatability of the structures limits the creative effort. Always to save money, the same sets and the same scenery are often reused in different films. Low-budget Christmas films are therefore repeated in terms of structure, sound and the actors used.
For example, Candace Cameron-Bure, known as the “Queen of Christmas,” has directed more than 10 Christmas movies in the past few years alone and has been signed to the Hallmark Channel. Ditto for directors like Ali Afshar, former racer-turned-director who directed three Christmas movies for HBO Max this year: A Christmas Mystery, Holiday Harmony, and A Hollywood Christmas. His luck began in 2020 when he directed A California Christmas for Netflix, which was the platform’s most watched title in December. The film had been shot at Warner’s studios, which, given its success, led Afshar from that moment to work on his platform’s (HBO Max, to be exact) Christmas movies, all with small budgets ranging from $3 million to $5 million .
Candace Cameron-Bure at a Hallmark Network screening in Los Angeles, 2019. (Morgan Lieberman/Getty Images)
The flattening of diversity helps to understand how, with some exceptions, these types of productions in the United States resonate well with the more conservative segments of the audience. Hallmark, the broadcaster that has notably managed to associate its brand with Christmas by investing heavily in a large number of productions, has strong Christian roots. In fact, it was born when Crown Media (its former owner) took over the openly Christian broadcaster Odyssey in 2001. These are networks with conservative programming, and these films are no exception.
Low-budget Christmas movies typically promote a largely white and straight worldview with a heavy emphasis on traditional family. Great American Family, a cable channel that has been around since 1995 but relaunched in 2021 to compete with Hallmark, kicked off its holiday movie season with the title Great American Christmas. As Alissa Wilkinson points out on Vox, the attraction to Donald Trump’s slogans is pretty obvious. And although these films never have explicit political content, the role models of man, woman and family are very clear. Again, Wilkinson called her “toxically nostalgic”.
Italian publications
Many of the films mentioned have not been released in Italy because platforms like HBO Max or channels like Hallmark don’t have a presence in our area. However, just having access to the best-known part of the Christmas films, which are distributed all over the world, also in Italy reveals a sharp increase in quantity and at the same time a decrease in quality. And this without taking national production into account.
Netflix, Prime Video Disney+, and Apple TV+ all had their own Christmas movies or TV series, albeit with different costs and ambitions. For example, Spirited, starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, is a Dickens-style comedy that’s very expensive and runs on Apple TV+. Instead, Falling For Christmas, the Netflix film that brought Lindsay Lohan back to acting, is a fast-growing production, as is one of the year’s top-grossing films, Noel’s Secret Diary (also from Netflix) or the Brit My Christmas or yours? (on PrimeVideo).
But perhaps the best example of this industrial production of cheesy Christmas movies is I Believe in Santa Claus on Netflix. It’s a production similar to Hallmark in terms of economy and approach, where the starting point is that when two adults go on a date, they discover that he still believes in Santa Claus. Although the idea is quite original, the film evolves around repeating the classic patterns of Christmas movies.
Christmas films with classic Christmas themes have also been increasingly produced in Italy since last year. Christian De Sica and Gigi Proietti both had Santa Claus in Who framed Santa Claus? (story of a Neapolitan scammer who takes on the toy factory at the North Pole) and I am Santa Claus (in which a criminal is just redeemed by having to become the new Santa Claus), while Diego Abatantuono did in 10 days the previous year had done with Santa Claus.
That year saw three Italian films: All of a sudden Christmas (again with Diego Abatantuono), Christmas at Any Price (again with Christian De Sica) and The Christmas Show (with Serena Autieri and Raoul Bova), to which was added the Netflix TV series I Hate Christmas (with Pilar Fogliati). The difference from the past is remarkable, because these films are not popular Christmas comedies (like this year’s Il grande giorno with Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo) and also do not only have Christmas as a backdrop. Instead, they explicitly revolve around classic Christmas themes such as family life, self-improvement, the joy of giving and a good feeling towards the world. While Italian films historically released around Christmas have become classics, like their American counterparts, these do not have that aspiration, but are part of a fast-moving production chain geared towards short-term economic returns.