Fans of Christmas romance usually know exactly what to expect when tuning in to any of the dozens of new movies on cable and streaming platforms each year.
For 90 minutes or so, they’ll see a city slicker return to her immaculately decorated small hometown for the holidays. A local guy will sweep her off her feet. The scenery will be snow-covered. The music will be merry. And a quick peck on the lips will reliably signify the lovers’ happy ending.
This year, however, some holiday films are stripping down. Literally.
“Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” on Netflix and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance” on Lifetime employ many of the usual tropes, but they’ve ditched the sweaters and fleeting embraces for steamier visuals. Here, in a move seemingly born of the realization that women are a key viewing demographic of the genre, the men are often shirtless and on display to be ogled by the female townsfolk. The kisses are passionate. And, in at least one instance, the lead characters have s-e-x.
Judging by the moans and longing gazes, these fictional women have been deprived of carnal fulfillment during holidays past. Modern Christmas movie viewers have been left wanting, too.
“Way back before Lifetime and Netflix, the old idea of a merry Christmas was filled with mistletoe, which invited transgressional romantic and sexual activity,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He also noted the presence of sexual undertones in everything from Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (a party scene where blindfolded revelers identify one another by touch) to songs like “Santa Baby” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“Given the long history of Christmas and sex,” Thompson added, “I’m actually surprised these movies have been as chaste as they are.”
Enter: “The Merry Gentlemen.” When Marla Sokoloff was approached to write the script for that Netflix movie (due Nov. 20), she said the director, Peter Sullivan, gave her a single phrase to go off: “‘Magic Mike’ meets Christmas.”
From there, Sokoloff crafted a story about a New York dancer, Ashley (Britt Robertson), who gets fired and returns home just in time to try to save her family’s cozy performance venue by choreographing a male revue led by a very fit local handyman, Luke (Chad Michael Murray).
Centering “Merry Gentlemen” on a pack of shirtless men makes “Merry Gentlemen” feel “a little bit more youthful and slightly spicy,” Sokoloff said. “A lot of people equate Christmas movies with grandmas in Ohio watching them, and I think it’s kind of fun toeing the line of, ‘Will Grandma like this one or will Grandma be offended by this one?’”
Sokoloff turned to “The Full Monty” when mapping out the men’s dance scenes, and her original script featured even more scantily clad costumes.
“There was a period where they were just in, like, Speedos with flashing lights on the back that said ‘Naughty Santa,’” she said. “We had to rein it in a bit.”
When the music stops, Ashley and Luke take things beyond the usually timid embrace of most holiday movies: These two make out with abandon.
“Personally, I love kissing. If there’s a kissing scene that’s written, I’m going in,” Robertson said. “Love is the most magical drug you could ever ask for, so as much of that feeling as you can give an audience, they’re better for it.”
Magic takes a more literal form in “Hot Frosty” (on Netflix Nov. 13), when a tautly sculpted snowman named Jack (Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek”) comes to life after a widow (Lacey Chabert) places an enchanted scarf on him. As their hearts begin to melt for each other, Jack is also actively trying not to become a puddle.
The movie was shot during a chilly spring in Ontario, Canada, and Milligan filmed two scenes outdoors wearing only “a bulky beige pair of thong underwear,” as he put it, to give the appearance of near nudity as his character gains sentience.
But the cold proved less of an obstacle than the overall emphasis on his body. As someone with a “history of body dysmorphia and disordered eating,” Milligan said he had to come to terms with the frequent shots of Jack’s muscles and the appreciative commentary from the ogling townspeople.
“I was in on the joke of him being a spectacle,” Milligan said. “But it was also something that, to be totally frank, internally, there was a lot of navigation and a lot of care that I had to put into where my head was at day to day.”
He said he leaned on Chabert, who acted as a “partner and an ally” to help him “feel protected in those moments.”
The actress is a veteran of more than 30 Hallmark movies and is making her Netflix Christmas debut just as Hallmark faces a lawsuit from a former casting director who has made allegations of ageism at that network. According to The Associated Press, the suit claims one Hallmark executive had said Chabert, who is 42, was “getting older and we have to find someone like her to replace her.” (Hallmark has denied the accusations.)
“I’m excited for what the future holds,” Chabert told The New York Times of expanding her Christmas roles to include Netflix. She added, “I felt like this was the perfect timing.”
On cable, Lifetime also appears intent on differentiating its Christmas romances from what’s expected on the more conservative Hallmark or Great American Family channels.
Lifetime touted “A Cowboy Christmas Romance” last year as its first Christmas movie to feature a sex scene, and the network is offering more holiday coitus in “A Carpenter Christmas Romance” (Dec. 21). This time, an author (Sasha Pieterse) falls for the carpenter (Mitchell Slaggert) who is rebuilding her hometown after a fire.
In both films, which were written and executive produced by the former “Grey’s Anatomy” star Sarah Drew, the sex is mostly implied and the scenes carefully cut away from sizzling embraces to the mornings after.
“I think I wrote in the script ‘and then they make love in a post-9 p.m.-television-friendly way,’” Drew said. “I mean, I’m a grown woman. I love romance shows. I love that stuff. All of my friends love that stuff, and they want more than a chaste kiss at the end.”
Lifetime is providing additional steamy moments in “Christmas in the Spotlight” (Nov. 23), about a fictional pop star falling for a professional football player in a love story that bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
In one scene, the singer (Jessica Lord) becomes positively giddy at the sight of the six-pack on her leading man (Laith Wallschleger).
“Can I touch it?” she asks after admitting she’s previously dated only “serious actors and indie rockers” and has thus never encountered such a physique.
“You can do anything you want to it,” he replies, as she sets down her wine glass to pet his abs.
Such innuendo and lust for the male torso in films like these can feel downright verboten in a family-friendly arena where any suggestion of eroticism has long been off-limits. Still, Thompson of Syracuse University said he didn’t think this was the beginning of a race toward drastically more explicit holiday fare.
“This is by no means ’50 Shades of Christmas,’” Thompson said. “The point is not to become sexier and sexier with more and more nudity.”
Instead, he said, it’s about continuing the “romantic fantasy” that the genre has for years peddled to its mostly female audience — only now with slightly more skin in the game.
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