Cheesy as it is, the premise is as sweet as it is predictable with plenty of fun, memorable scenes and unexpected moments thrown in. Lifetime’s new and first-ever lesbian Christmas movie is a legitimately good queer film in which the main character, Alma (Elise Bauman), is not only accepted by her Maine-based, small-Christmas-business-owner parents for being a lesbian but also encouraged to fall in love with out-of-town stranger Charlie (Tattiawna Jones). Now if we could just get a smart, well-written, celebrity-cast lesbian Hanukkah rom-com.
That is, queer holiday films actually center queer people now - same-sex holiday revelers crush and fall in love, break up, regain romance, and just live the same celebratory December existence every heterosexual (or closeted) character has gotten for, well, ever. And while the film is still worth an annual watch, so much more has happened in seasonal cinema since SJP’s iconic spilled-strata scene with matriarch Diane Keaton.
Not too long ago, LGBTQ+ people who wanted to see themselves represented in holiday movies could either (a) pretend or (b) settle for a second-rate film with a queer character who had very few lines, ambition, or development.Įarly in the contemporary holiday queer canon, The Family Stone, which stars gay icon Sarah Jessica Parker as a (shocker) snobby New Yorker spending the holidays at her boyfriend’s family home, became queer canon for its B-plot gay couple with ambitions to adopt a baby.
