OH, THE PANDEMIC OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL ...
... But these warm, fuzzy holiday movies are so delightful
David Gowan, 30, has long been known to bust out his favourite Christmas movies a little on the early side. Elf. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Christmas With the Kranks. But in 2020, he pulled the trigger much earlier than even he expected. The instructional-support teacher who lives by himself in Jamestown, N.Y., was home channel-surfing on a Tuesday night when he unexpectedly took in his first Hallmark Channel holiday movie of the year. It was July 28.
Gowan can't remember the name of the movie, but he remembers it involved a guy losing his job, moving from the big city back to his quaint hometown and falling in love with a beautiful woman who owns a bookshop (not terribly helpful as a search filter, it turns out). Gowan also remembers the movie was an excellent distraction from his real life. He wasn't working at the time. He was bored and stressed staying home alone. Outside, the world was in the grip of a deadly pandemic.
“Christmas movies just bring that warm feeling,” he said. In such a tense time, “seeing happy movies just helps.”
In 2020, a year when an alarmingly small number of things are normal, Christmas movies are affecting viewers and would-be viewers in unusual ways. Over the many months of pandemic-related chaos and isolation, some people have made holiday movies their anytime movies, with their low stakes, guaranteed tidy and hopeful endings, and ability to make staying indoors seem appealingly cosy. Meanwhile, in a season when festive family gatherings are discouraged, others have found watching holiday movies is a more bittersweet experience than usual.
Nicole Sunderland, a 36-yearold travel blogger and influencer based in Alexandria, Va., got an even earlier head start on the holiday-movie season than Gowan did: When she had to abruptly stop travelling the globe in March, she found some comfort in old favourites like Bad Santa and Mixed Nuts. As the year wore on and she felt more and more distressed by the worsening pandemic and the tumultuous U.S. presidential election, she kept returning to them.
At this point, Sunderland estimates she's watched Netflix's 2018 original The Holiday Calendar between 15 and 20 times. “Christmas is my happy place,” she said.
Screenwriter Karen Schaler — who's earned the nickname “Christmas Karen” by writing two Lifetime Christmas movies, a Hallmark Christmas movie and the 2017 Netflix hit A Christmas Prince, as well as multiple Christmas novels — isn't surprised by this trend.
Holiday movies aren't their own genre just because they take place during holidays, she said: They also contain uplifting messages about “honouring our family, our friends, our faith, our community.”
Schaler has seen first hand how pop-culture appetites have changed in 2020. She said she faced pressure not to release her new Christmas book, Christmas Ever After, because of the pandemic, but decided to publish it independently.
“My fans were reaching out basically saying `Please, please, please, please — we need something,'” Schaler said. “`We need it. We need something happy.'”
But for some, the standard holiday plot lines — family bonding and stroke-of-midnight romance — can be difficult to watch once viewers realizes that, this year, they can't do any of that. For example, in The Holidate, a new Netflix offering, two strangers connect in a bustling mall and decide to spend New Year's Eve together in a crowded club. Nowadays, two singles might strike up a conversation on the street, but they'll only be able to see one another's eyes and foreheads. A successful chat might lead to a video date, but definitely not to a night of dancing in close quarters with hundreds of strangers.
Francis Ferdinand, 25, was watching The Holidate last week when it struck her she'd be alone for the holidays.
“It was definitely something I haven't been thinking about because my mind's been consumed with 2020,” she said. “Overall I enjoyed the movie, but it hit a lot harder with some of the tropes that you wouldn't think about as much if you're with friends and family.”
Some of those tropes include: The hubbub, the arguing, maybe the burning of a turkey and always the prying into single relatives' love lives. “When I go home, things are definitely chaotic,” Ferdinand said of her big Italian family in Rhode Island. And they'll usually ask: Who are you dating? Are you bringing anyone special home? “This year it's like: `No, I haven't gone on a date. I've been locked in my apartment,'” Ferdinand said. She'll be cooking holiday dishes solo and rewatching favourites like White Christmas.
There are a handful of holiday films that feel in sync with our times. Two strangers corresponding over the internet in You've Got Mail, with no idea that they're business rivals. Or this year's Netflix holiday-themed darling Dash and Lily, about two teenagers who write to one another, complete dares and solve puzzles in a notebook they pass off to each other without meeting.
Series creator Joe Tracz said that when the cast and crew were filming in New York in late 2019, they were wondering: “Will people buy that two people can have a connection when they're not in person?” This year has shown that the answer is “absolutely yes.” And the series has an unexpected lesson for 2020: Even while physically separated, he said, “you can still have connections that are meaningful.”