Once December hits, it seems like everyone I know has the same plans every evening. They pour themselves a drink, make a bowl of snacks, and plop on any streaming service, and settle in with a different holiday movie every night.
And now that places like Netflix, Hallmark, and Lifetime are churning out these Christmas movies every year, you have lots of options.
You might be watching it ironically, but you’re still watching it. Why? Because underneath the sugar-crusted clichés, there’s a formula that works.
But as screenwriters, we need to understand the tropes so we can either use them effectively or, even better, shatter them into a million glittering pieces.
Let’s dive in.
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Christmas Movie Tropes
1. The Big City Hotshot Who Hates Christmas
It feels like there’s one of these people in every Christmas movie I watch. There are the ones that are highly exaggerated, and even the subtle ones.
They can be the protagonist or even the antagonist.
Think about a high-powered, cynical executive like Buddy the Elf’s dad, or when one of those Hallmark Type-A journalists is forced to go to a small, impossibly charming town—usually named something like Hollybrooke or Snowfall Creek—right before Christmas.
They have an impossible deadline or a soulless task (e.g., condemn the local reindeer farm). They hate the local traditions, wear drab clothing, and talk too fast.
And then it all changes when they begin to believe in the spirit of the season, and they fall in love with the town, the spirit, and the handsome or feisty local.
Subvert the Trope
Instead of all those cliché things happening, what if the Hotshot genuinely tried to ruin things? Make them a real villain with a lot of power and motives.
Stack the odds against people and add some real stakes.
You don’t need to redeem everyone. They could even meet a more dastardly fate thanks to their endless attempts to ruin Christmas.
A little edge here could go a long way.
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2. The Small Town Where Nothing Ever Changes
In a lot of these movies, we go to a perfect town that is somehow perpetually on the brink of financial ruin unless the annual Gingerbread Festival can raise enough money.
Or even Whoville in The Grinch has a bunch of underlying issues that have to do with finding the spirit of Christmas.
Everyone knows everyone’s business, and it’s always snowing the perfect, non-slushy kind of snow.
Subvert the Trope
Make the town’s charm its problem. What if the town’s quaintness is actively suffocating the younger generation? What if the local traditions are actually super weird and slightly cultish?
You can play with genre here, and adding a little dose of dark comedy and realism can elevate the setting from a Hallmark background to a genuine character.
You may even find a unique story there, too.
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3. The Wrong Significant Other
My wife loves these Christmas romcoms, and we’ve probably seen dozens of them. There’s always a character who is engaged to a successful, but clearly unsuitable, person who is always on a business call and never seen.
Or they always have to leave early for work on every occasion.
This person is a plot device—the one the protagonist needs to dump before the credits roll to be with the real love interest, the local lumberjack/bakery owner.
Subvert the Trope
Give the “wrong” person a relatable personality. Make them genuinely nice, but fundamentally incompatible because of something that maybe can’t be changed.
Or switch the whole story and make the movie about them realizing they’re that tropey character and trying to win their person back from the perfect person they meet in one of these culty towns.
You want to force the protagonist to make a tougher, more mature choice than simply running away from a caricature.
Better yet, make the “wrong” person the one who ultimately teaches the protagonist the Christmas lesson, proving that sometimes, the spirit of the season comes from an unexpected source.
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4. The Last-Minute ‘Miracle’ That Saves Everything
The climax of most of these movies inevitably involves the protagonists racing against time to save Christmas/the town/the family heirloom.
Just when all hope seems lost—the lights go out, the bank is closed, the Santa suit is ruined—a perfectly timed miracle (a snowstorm, a generous, anonymous donor, or, God forbid, actual magic) intervenes.
Subvert the Trope
Miracles are great, but they are dramatically boring. The protagonist must solve the problem using their own growth, and without that, it will feel like a deus ex machina.
If the whole movie is about the executive learning to rely on people, then the climax should be them using their corporate negotiation skills and the help of their new small-town friends to save the day.
If it’s about a couple getting together, we need to see that grand gesture that actually means something to one of them and shows how they earned that love.
The victory should be a culmination of the themes, not an act of God.
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Summing It All Up
The secret to a great Christmas movie is the same as the secret to any great screenplay: authentic conflict and genuine emotion…with a couple of surprises.
As long as the people in the story feel real, their problems feel earned, and their eventual transformation is rooted in something deep, you should be good.
If you subvert some of these tropes, you could be on your way to a new Christmas classic.
Let us know in the comments!