As surely as boxes of chocolate on store shelves, they return every year starting in October. Christmas romantic comedies are reaching the programming of television channels. And we will enjoy it until we are nauseated, like chocolates.
With their very American recipe, despite some French productions, the syrupy Christmas romantic comedies colonize the schedules of TF1 and M6, a little earlier each year, a sign that the public is there. It is, as Agathe Guillemet, artistic head of television film acquisitions at TF1, told us in 2024, “an event” that viewers “look forward to every year.”
Platforms like Netflix or Amazon are not left out and program a multitude of them, sometimes internally. Although they seem interchangeable, some are distinguished by their ability to adapt a little to time and the evolution of society, offering a little diversity.
For Marianne Levy, author and screenwriter, who co-created and co-wrote the Netflix Christmas miniseries. Christmas flowIt is a “pre-Christmas aperitif, a little mulled wine before the holidays.”
However, he wishes to distinguish the “famous afternoon television films”, which are “a commercial product”, from “the romantic Christmas filmography”, which includes classics such as love in reality EITHER the holidays.
A Hallmark related story
On the one hand, the television movies produced miles away by the American channels Hallmark and Lifetime. On the other hand, romantic comedies with a real author and point of view.
“I think it’s important to make this distinction, because there are real Christmas romantic comedies that are part of the heritage of cinema and we often associate them with bad television movies,” says Marianne Levy, for whom “we would never compare a Scorsese film with an episode of Inspector Derrick.”
If romantic comedies and Christmas movies were born much earlier, their fusion, Christmas romantic comedies, appeared in the early 2000s.
The history of these cinnamon-scented romantic comedies is closely linked to that of the Hallmark company. Known for its greeting cards since the early 20th century, Hallmark began sponsoring Christmas shows in the 1950s, before creating a television channel in 2001 to air Christmas romantic comedies. Since 2009, Hallmark has implemented a countdown to Christmas, like a kind of Advent calendar, airing earlier and earlier, starting in October.
The commercial dimension and conservative values of this channel, with Christian roots, impose very precise specifications on the romantic comedies it produces, which even include the number of commercial breaks.
Aimed at a female audience, these romantic comedies involve an encounter experienced from the heroine’s point of view. Two types of scenarios are possible. The first is about a woman who has a responsible job in a big city and must return for the Christmas holidays to the small town where she comes from. There he finds a young love.
Conservative values
The conflict, necessary to advance the plot, “typically arises around the heroine’s attachment to her family or small-town values, as opposed to her commitment to her career or ‘big-city values,'” notes the Writers Guild Foundation, which promotes the history and art of writing for the screen, in an article dedicated to the recipe for Hallmark Christmas movies.
We find the same kind of pattern in Netflix’s Christmas rom-coms, as in Christmas comes just in timein which Lindsay Lohan, a rich heiress to a hotel chain, rediscovers true values when she falls in love with a penniless widower, father of a little girl.
The second type of scenario is similar to a fairy tale and marks the meeting of a “normal” (and American) person with a prince or princess in an imaginary country located in Europe and obviously snowy, as in Once upon a time in Castleburywhich takes place on the border of Liechtenstein.
Conservatism and traditional family values permeate the scripts of these television movies, which most often feature white, heterosexual protagonists.
It was in the cinema where the first Christmas romantic comedy with homosexual characters was released, A very very happy Christmas.in 2009. Then we will have to wait until 2020. My in-laws, Noël and me.with actress Kristen Stewart, heroine of a lesbian romance to get away from heteronormative paths a bit. Channels and platforms such as the Lifetime channel or Netflix have also gotten involved.
Christmas, a character in itself
The environment is a particularly important element in these romantic comedies, and it is rare not to find decorated fir trees, (fake) snow and all these elements that make it clear in the blink of an eye that it is Christmas.
In fact, Noël plays “a character in himself”, as Lucie Castel, author of romantic comedies and host of Become a writer.
“Christmas and all its aesthetics, its legend and its mythology, intervene as a character as such.”
Furthermore, Lucie Castel points out, it is “the mythology of Christmas (that) moves the story forward.” “The origin of the meeting between the characters must go back to the Christmas season. It is because it is Christmas and thanks to its magic the love story is born,” says the author.
“Everything is allowed, it is the magic of Christmas”
The Christmas romantic comedy does not worry about realism, and this is another of its characteristics, whether we are talking about television movies or movies.
In fact, Christmas allows the screenwriter to “do everything possible because it is Christmas,” says Marianne Levy. “There is no realism in Christmas.” “For a creator, it’s super exciting, because you can bet on the wonderful, on the exaggeration. Anything goes, that’s the magic of Christmas.” “It is really, for an author, very interesting material, because it allows us to deepen the exploration of our relationships.”
A slightly timeless moment, linked to childhood, that fosters wonder and nostalgia. Christmas is, for screenwriter Marianne Levy, “a celebration in which we all project ourselves, for better or worse. It is a moment that we look forward to every year since childhood. We associate it with the wonderful, with enchanted things. And at the same time, as we grow, many neuroses, wounds, pain, misunderstandings resurface.”
However, what better remedy for the worries of the future and the confrontations of the past than love, the hope of renewal, the manifestation of a finally happy destiny, the happy ending, inseparable from any Christmas romantic comedy? As the slow march towards Christmas begins, we begin to dream that more French screenwriters will take up this genre, to offer a less sugary and overly sweet version of the Christmas romantic comedy.
Source: BFM TV
