Around 15 years ago, when I first stumbled upon made-for-TV Christmas movies, I saw them as overly sentimental and even anti-feminist. They seemed geared towards an older audience, featuring protagonists floundering through midlife crises who found redemption in their romantic and professional lives, all thanks to the magic of Christmas. Then, one December morning, it hit me: I had become the target audience. Now older, I realized these movies were made for me.

How I Aged Into the Bad Christmas Movie

This year’s batch of Christmas films — largely airing on Hallmark Channel, though Netflix’s holiday lineup is quickly catching up — seem to cater to millennials. They star familiar faces from childhood classics and borrow plots and styles from iconic films. These movies have learned to balance melodrama with playful self-awareness, while adding a dash of sexual innuendo to keep things fresh.

Romantic comedies often follow a formula: one character lowers her defenses, while the other raises his game until they meet in the middle. That’s exactly what’s happening here. The so-called “bad” Christmas movies have become more cynical, but I’ve softened in response. By the time I finished watching Our Little Secret, a Netflix Christmas flick starring Lindsay Lohan, I was genuinely moved — and even teary-eyed.https://wordpress.com/

What’s happening to me? My views on work, love, big cities, small towns, and holiday cheer have hardly changed in recent years. But what has shifted is my tolerance for sentimental fluff. These days, I’m so worn out by stress and responsibility that I find it difficult to start any new, compelling TV series. I just don’t have the mental energy to get invested in unfamiliar characters or complex plot twists.

What I’ve been craving instead is an utterly undemanding show — something that requires no emotional or intellectual investment and offers very little in return. The bad Christmas movie delivers exactly that. Its predictability, its familiar beats, and its recycled actors and settings make it easy to relax into a comforting, almost hypnotic rhythm. The genre’s formulaic nature has become a kind of tradition. It plays like the warm glow of a fireplace on a cold winter’s day.

The modern TV Christmas movie’s blueprint was set by Hallmark Channel in the early 2000s, and over the years, they’ve built an entire cinematic universe where everything is as simple as a greeting card. These movies are filled with a narrow set of plots and tropes: The protagonist might be a pastry chef, a gift-wrapping business owner, or the CEO of a candy cane company. She might inherit an inn in Alaska, stumble upon a Scottish castle, or get rerouted to a Christmas-themed town after a flight mishap.

She’ll meet a widowed single father, a charming woodworker, or a handsome but mysterious earl. His house will be covered in Christmas lights, and there will be bowls of frosted pine cones everywhere. He’ll wear a scarf. Then another scarf. And at some point, he’ll gift her a holiday-themed necklace.

Together, they’ll put on a holiday festival or search for a missing antique. In the end, she’ll either leave her big-city job to join him in his small-town life or, in more recent films, he’ll leave his small-town roots to be with her in the city. There will be snow, and they’ll share a kiss.

Everything about these movies is so predictably familiar. Even the actors who are unfamiliar to me feel instantly recognizable, as if they’ve been cast to resemble well-known stars. I’ve found myself charmed by how seriously they take the genre: a steady stream of hardworking actors, returning year after year to re-enact the same holiday rituals, all while sporting festive sweaters and straight faces.

The sheer volume of these films is almost impressive. Hallmark has produced hundreds of movies, each claiming to be unique but still following the same formula. It makes me wonder how long they can keep this going. They even have a whole series of films under the “Time to Come Home for Christmas” label, with Blake Shelton as executive producer. The titles alone show just how repetitive the theme is: Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas, Time for Her to Come Home for Christmas, Time for Us to Come Home for Christmas… you get the idea.

Enter Netflix, which has reinvigorated the genre with its own spin. Since The Princess Switch in 2018 (think The Prince and the Pauper, but make it Christmas), Netflix has pumped out numerous original holiday films. They borrow heavily from mainstream hits, weaving in content that feels familiar to the millennial generation. Hot Frosty is basically Encino Man with a holiday twist, and The Merry Gentlemen is a Christmas version of Magic Mike.

Hallmark is following suit, offering up Christmas in Notting Hill (a Notting Hill remake with Christmas cheer), Holiday Crashers (a Wedding Crashers Christmas edition), and A ’90s Christmas (which mirrors Hot Tub Time Machine, but make it Christmas).

These newer films stick to the same formula with a few tweaks. Now, we have bad Hanukkah movies (Hanukkah on Rye) and films exploring interfaith holiday dynamics (Double Holiday). The actors are becoming increasingly familiar. Lindsay Lohan, once the face of childhood classics like The Parent Trap and teen hits like Mean Girls, is now building a midlife holiday empire on Netflix. Her latest project, Our Little Secret, is a comedy about spending the holidays with problematic in-laws.

Another Netflix film, The Merry Gentlemen, features Chad Michael Murray (of One Tree Hill fame) as a small-town carpenter helping a city girl save her parents’ struggling local business by starring in a festive revue. His shirtless abs were a major part of the promotional cycle. Shirtless male leads are becoming a must in these holiday films — in Hot Frosty, the widowed protagonist magically brings a chiseled snowman to life, and he spends much of the movie wearing nothing but a scarf.

Lacey Chabert, a Hallmark Christmas veteran, stars in Hot Frosty, adding her familiar charm to Netflix’s holiday offerings. Chabert, who rose to fame in Party of Five and Mean Girls, excels at playing characters with names like Kathy or Kylie. She’s the perfect professional woman who needs to rediscover the magic of Christmas in a small town — though her character is never truly hard-edged or too professional. She’s more likely to ask for the Wi-Fi password than to get too caught up in work.

In Hot Frosty, things get a little more interesting. Chabert’s character still learns life lessons and receives her snowflake necklace, but this time, the movie also includes actual humor. And the plot takes a ludicrous turn that fits perfectly with the over-the-top nature of the genre.

Pairing Chabert with a sentient ice sculpture was a stroke of genius. Now, her typical reserved performance is balanced by Dustin Milligan (from Schitt’s Creek) as the talking snowman. The snowman learns everything from watching TV — including Netflix’s previous Christmas movies — which makes it believable when he treats Chabert exactly like the hero of one of these films.

Hot Frosty may not be a full-blown parody of bad Christmas movies, but it still fits the genre’s formula. I probably won’t watch it again, but I’ll definitely be back for more next year.