A Very Queer Christ­mas: Is the LGBTQ+ hol­i­day rom-com sea­son upon us?

In the vast Hall­mark-decked land­scape of feel­go­od Christ­mas flicks, LGBTQ+ iden­ti­ties are usu­al­ly nowhere to be found. How­ev­er, stream­ing ser­vices are about to change the fes­tive game with not just one but two queer-focused releases.

Six­teen years after a same-sex sto­ry­line was infa­mous­ly cut from Love Actu­al­ly, Net­flix is try­ing to right the wrongs of that and many oth­er movies with Let It Snow. The film, adapt­ed from the 2008 young adult nov­el by Mau­reen John­son, John Green and Lau­ren Myr­a­cle, is pure corny Christ­mas fun, trans­port­ing view­ers to a small Illi­nois town hit by a snow­storm on Christ­mas Eve.

The advent of this sea­son­al queer sto­ry marks a major improve­ment for LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion on-screen, reflect­ing the fact that more peo­ple – an increase of two per cent and four-and-a-half per cent in the UK and US respec­tive­ly – now iden­ti­fy as non-heterosexual.

Unlike the book, Let It Snow fea­tures a female queer romance. Liv Hew­son stars as Dor­rie, who falls for clos­et­ed cheer­leader Tegan (Anna Akana). Both actors iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ+, with Hew­son being a non-bina­ry les­bian and Akana open­ly dis­cussing her bisex­u­al­i­ty with her 2.6 mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers. This is refresh­ing since female char­ac­ters in Christ­mas movies are typ­i­cal­ly straight pro­tag­o­nists wait­ing for a het­ero­nor­ma­tive kiss under­neath the mistletoe.

While the recent likes of A Christ­mas Prince have pro­mot­ed the cliché of the campy gay best friend, for so long queer women in rom-coms have been as rare as uni­corns. But the sig­nif­i­cance of Let It Snow goes beyond mere rep­re­sen­ta­tion. ​“Main­stream films with queer char­ac­ters in sup­port­ing roles are impor­tant in rais­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty and chang­ing hearts and minds from homo­pho­bia,” explains Nao­mi Ben­nett, founder of Les­Flicks, a plat­form which aims to increase pub­lic knowl­edge of, and access to, films with les­bian or bisex­u­al themes or char­ac­ters. ​“It’s essen­tial that these writ­ers cre­ate pos­i­tive and accu­rate representations.”

Yet even when queer con­tent enters the main­stream through the front door, it’s hard­ly ever in a light­heart­ed man­ner. Until now the clos­est thing to a Christ­mas movie cater­ing to queer female audi­ences was Todd Haynes’ peri­od dra­ma Car­ol, which for all its mer­its is not exact­ly a hap­py romance. So what’s the answer? ​“The best thing to do is to write a straight Christ­mas sto­ry and then change the man to a woman and update the lan­guage,” Ben­nett suggests.

This year, crowd­fund­ed all-queer female hol­i­day movie Sea­son of Love is flip­ping the het­ero­nor­ma­tive nar­ra­tive. It presents three same-sex romances by using the same tropes as tra­di­tion­al­ly straight Christ­mas roman­tic come­dies. ​“I hope we can show the world that our sto­ries need to be in the mix,” says direc­tor and pro­duc­er Christin Baker.

If it’s hard to buy that Iris (Emi­ly Goss), left at the altar by a man, can find solace and true love in just a few days, it’s not because she falls for a woman. It’s sim­ply because in true hol­i­day rom-com fash­ion, the nar­ra­tive doesn’t allow for much in the way of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. More believ­able are the sub­plots involv­ing diverse queer cou­ples at dif­fer­ent stages in their relationships.

Bak­er con­tin­ue, ​“It’s dif­fi­cult for [queer] women to get funds to make movies. Then you have a male direc­tor mak­ing a movie and some­times they just don’t get it quite right so the com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t embrace it. If stu­dios gave mon­ey to female pro­duc­ers and prop­er mon­ey around adver­tis­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, they would see there is an audience.”

Sea­son of Love boasts one name well-known to the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty: Dominique Provost-Chalk­ley, famous for por­tray­ing Waver­ly in Syfy series Wynon­na Earp, plays Sue, a woman try­ing to find her voice both as a singer and a part­ner to her long-time girl­friend. ​“I knew it was an impor­tant project for the com­mu­ni­ty as soon as I heard about it and was a large part of the rea­son I decid­ed to take the role,” Provost-Chalk­ley reflects. She adds that work­ing with beau­ti­ful, strong queer cre­atives ​“gives me hope for the future of media and reas­sures me that we are mov­ing in the right direction.”

The next hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed step in the right direc­tion for fes­tive queer rom-coms is the the­atri­cal release of Hap­pi­est Sea­son. With les­bian direc­tor Clea DuVall behind the cam­era, the Kris­ten Stew­art-Macken­zie Davis vehi­cle has all the mak­ings of a tragedy-free top­per for our Christ­mas trees in 2020. Because queer women deserve instant hol­i­day clas­sics too.