Yes, horror is my favorite genre year-round. This holiday season, I will be watching Gremlins, Black Christmas, Rare Exports and all my other favorite holiday horror. But there’s another genre I can’t get enough of this time of year – Christmas romance movies. As I’ve logged these saccharine pleasures in my Letterbox over the past few years, I’ve noticed that the cast and crew behind them have a peculiar pattern dotting their credits. Horror movies.
There is a voracious appetite for Christmas romance movies and, thus, a wealth of opportunities for filmmakers and actors. “Christmas movies are like a stepping stone. We make so many of them,” says Emma Jean Sutherland, who has worked as First Assistant Director on numerous Christmas romance movies and directed Letters to Satan Claus, a 2020 horror comedy that parodies Christmas romance movies. “It’s how you cut your teeth in filmmaking… All of the people who made Satan Claus had done a ton of them to pay rent.”
So sure, maybe the people making Christmas romance movies are largely there for the reliable work and steady paychecks to get a foot in the door. But the Christmas-to-horror pipeline doesn’t always flow in that direction, as with the career of writer and filmmaker Michael Varrati, whose background in indie horror cinema gave him a knack for writing to a budget on a quick turnaround, a great fit for branching his career into holiday films, too. “There’s this proud association of spooky kids who do the seasonal stuff as well,” says Varrati.
Christmas With You starring I Know What You Did Last Summer‘s Freddie Prinze Jr. and co-written by Michael Varrati.
Horror is another genre with a seemingly endless demand from fans. “Horror has always had a strong base. They’re the kind of people that come out for conventions. They’re extremely loyal and vocal and they’re continuous,” says Sutherland. Varrati adds, “The kinship between [horror and Christmas romance] is they’re all cult films in a way. Cult cinema is about community. People find each other because they like these films.”
For as much as each genre has its devoted fans, a segment of movie-goers will look at these films and ask, despite their popularity, “Why would anybody want to watch that?” The answer reveals further commonalities between the two genres beyond the practical realities of the film industry, from thematic parallels and heavy reliance on genre tropes and cliches to the way each genre evokes strong feelings and psychological effects and an appeal to audiences who experience social otherness.
Horror and Christmas romance movies are two sides of the fairy tale coin. Whereas Christmas romance movies might give you the fairy tale with Prince Charming and a happily ever after, horror movies give you the version where the children are devoured or the heroine throws herself into the sea. Christmas romance gives you the splendid castle; horror gives you the dark woods.
Both lovers and detractors of Christmas romance movies may point to how formulaic the genre is. There’s a meet-cute, a best friend, a precocious child. Often, there’s an appearance of a mysterious, wizened old man who is actually Santa. There’s a miscommunication or seeming betrayal, which leads to a rift and a climactic resolution with proclamations of love. Depending on whether you like these movies, the formula can be either gratifying or grating.
Christmas Catch (2018)
The same goes for horror movies. There’s a creepy child, or a dark basement. No cell phone service or a car that won’t start. A chase or a final girl. And there’s almost always one last scare. In horror, there is often a pleasure in the subversion of these tropes, but that subversion is not possible without recognition of them. We must know the rules to break the rules.
The familiarity and predictability of each genre creates comfort for the faithful audiences of each. While fans of any genre may find comfort in their favorite movies, there is much literature about romance as escapism and the appeal and power of horror for anxious minds.
In a BookRiot article, “Craving Fictional Horror to Escape Real Horror,” Jamie Canaves describes reading romance novels to escape from US politics before turning to horror fiction. She writes, “Where do you place the feeling of terror when you can’t do anything about the things that are terrorizing you? My brain’s answer appears to be to find fake things to terrorize yourself with. Why? I can’t control the outcome of a book, but I can put it down.” She concludes, “I want to feel scared by something that isn’t real.” Canaves’ conclusion tracks with recent research that for some viewers, watching horror movies helps with anxiety. In The New York Times, Melinda Wenner Moyer writes:
“Some studies have found that people who are feeling nervous or are prone to anxiety are drawn to horror films, too. Perhaps scary movies provide a new focal point for their worries: Instead of ruminating over, say, finances, they can worry about the zombies they’re watching. When you watch a horror movie, you can ‘switch the source of your anxiety,’ explained Coltan Scrivner, a researcher in the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark, which studies the situations in which fear can be fun and meaningful. When the movie ends, your anxiety may subside, too.”
Christmas romance movies also provide an escape from real-world anxieties. “People like movie Christmas because it’s not like real Christmas,” says Varrati. Sutherland adds, “The thing about Christmas movies is that…you know everything is going to be OK in the end. Christmas is already stressful.” In an in-depth survey of women who read Harlequin romance novels, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” scholar Janice Radway found that readers overwhelmingly claimed that the novels brought them a sense of escape from the burdens of their daily lives. Her analysis suggests that although romance novels maintain patriarchal gender roles, the reading experience is more about an escape from reality than an escape to the unreality of fantasy:
“It is true, certainly, that the romantic story itself reaffirms the perfection of romance and marriage. But it is equally clear that the constant need for such an assertion derives not from a sense of security and complete faith in the status quo, but from deep dissatisfaction with the meager benefits apportioned to women by the very institutions legitimated in the narrative.”
Although Radway emphasizes the heteronormativity of Harlequin romance novels, Christmas romance movies are becoming more and more outwardly queer, including Hallmark’s first lesbian Christmas romance coming out this year, Friends & Family Christmas. “There has been a shift where networks are realizing that audiences are more diverse than they used to give them credit for,” says Varrati. “We [queer people] were always there watching… When you’re talking about the need to escape, queer people are going to be drawn to that. It was only a matter of time for queer people to be able to stake their claim in this space.”
As Christmas romance movies take steps towards greater diversity, horror movies have always featured representations and themes of queerness and otherness. “Horror stories and monster movies, perhaps more than any other genre, actively invoke queer readings,” writes Harry Benshoff in his 1997 book Monsters in the Closet. Benshoff’s “monster queers” in horror disrupt the heterosexual status quo, whereas Christmas romance movies reinforce the heterosexual status quo, yet both genres have a queer streak. “Let’s face it: Christmas is queer,” says Varrati. “A Christmas tree is an evergreen in drag, it’s something that has been done up in this spectacular way. Everything about Christmas is a little bit extra, and who doesn’t love that fabulousness?”
Emma Jean Sutherland explained that horror fans unfamiliar with the rules of Christmas romance movies sometimes find Letters to Satan Claus cheesy. On the other hand, the film’s horror aspects did not quite land with their mother. “I really love being part of both of these worlds,” says Varrati, describing how the two genres he works in allow him to reach different people within one household – or sometimes the same people. The two genres present a bizarre Venn diagram, but there are people like us out there, in the intersection, who appreciate both. It’s a larger intersection than you might expect.
