A Very Merry Taxonomy of the Black Christmas Movie
Originally published in Vulture on Dec. 23, 2022
Christmas movies can be formulaic, sappy, and cheesy. But a Black-ass Christmas movie — one that is made for Black people and steeped in Black culture, not just a typical white plot dipped in chocolate — meets you at the intersection of generational trauma, singing, out-loud laughter, seasoned meals, and a healthy dose of anxiety. But it’s fun! No, for real.
In white holiday movies, the most significant threat is often the loss of some ill-defined Christmas magic. Melissa Joan Hart will uncover the secret cookie recipe that saves the town factory, and Candace Cameron Bure will uncover the mystical (non-rainbow!) ornament that returns peace to some Scandinavian-esque town square. Those movies certainly have a place in our hearts. But with Black holiday movies, you’re on the edge of your seat because the stakes are so damn high. There’s illness, economic uncertainty, love, loss, and tangled family ties. The death of a matriarch uncovers secrets shared only with the lawyer who falls in love with her granddaughter, all while a soon-to-be-foreclosed family business is on the line.
In the ’90s and early aughts, a few Black-centered holiday movies landed in theaters. But with the introduction of Black-centric channels and streaming services (including BET+, Bounce, TV One, and OWN), we now have a bounty to enjoy every holiday season. Some recognizable themes and tropes run through these stories: Someone’s usually dead, dying, or recently diagnosed. A home or a business is often at stake. Family secrets spill out in the third act. In the spirit of the season, herewith we’ll honor the recurring twists and tropes of a few of the 21st century’s best Black holiday movies.
Dying, I’m Dying
From classics like A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life to recent entries like Last Christmas, holiday movies and impending death go together like egg and nog. A holiday centered around a famous birth and movies about promised death might feel misaligned, but given the season’s promise of new beginnings and redemption, it actually makes perfect sense.
“I’m just gonna blow it”
The Queen Latifah–starring rom-com Last Holiday (2006) is a fantastical story about what it takes for a Black woman to take a break. Being a Black woman working in America is to reduce your life span and its quality, and so it’s with this understanding that our Georgia Byrd (Latifah) decides to live like there is no tomorrow because, for her, there may not be. While working as a test-kitchen cook inside a department store, she hits her head and gets checked out at the in-store clinic, where she learns she has an advanced disease and only weeks left to live. Instead of being directed to a specialist, she’s sent to an insurance agent who does little more than offer her thoughts and prayers. Georgia’s lack of resources prohibits her from getting a second opinion.
The story has all the makings to be SAD sad, but it’s also light and fun-filled, centering on Georgia reclaiming her time. She comes out of her shell in the church choir, eats a non-diet frozen dinner, tells off her weirdo boss, and blows her money on a first-rate Prague ski vacation where she happens to run into the CEO of the department store and his mistress. She also runs into her senator and a congressman, whose trips were extralegally sponsored by said CEO, and teaches them a lesson about how to treat working people.
Eventually, we learn that Georgia was misdiagnosed, thanks to the megastore clinic’s faulty equipment; she isn’t dying after all. Still, she’s learned a thing or two about seizing the moment, and locked down a hot love interest, too — LL Cool J’s character gets on a plane despite his fear of flying, climbs a mountain in an avalanche, and defies his own fear of heights at the ledge of a building, all just to tell Georgia he will love her for however long she has left.
“Nobody deserves misery. It’s just your turn now.”
Across the diaspora, Black people mourn by facing death head-on through dance, celebration, tears, laughter, fantastic food, and more. This is what Best Man Holiday (2013) does so well; it is an exploration of grief that gives us the space to be in our feelings, laugh with our peoples, and ogle a very fine Morris Chestnut.
Mia (Monica Calhoun) is dying of cancer and wants to spend one last Christmas with her loved ones: her husband Lance (Morris Chestnut), and their friends Harper (Taye Diggs), his wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan), Julian (Harold Perrineau), his wife Candace (Regina Hall), Jordan (Nia Long), her man Brian (Eddie Cibrian), Quentin (Terrence Howard), and Shelby (Melissa De Sousa). In light of the devastating news, everyone tries to stick to their best behavior, which lasts about a day.
Best Man Holiday is Stepmom-level sad, but the most heartbreaking moments in the film are intermixed with the most joyful. We see Mia break down over being unable to do her baby’s hair, a devastating rendition of “O Holy Night,” and Lance and Harper’s agony at Mia’s funeral. We also get a gorgeous choreographed dance featuring some of the finest men on the planet, Mia talking that talk to her football-player husband, inspiring him to break records in the game, and life lessons from light-skinned Santa. The juxtaposition of joy and mourning is never incongruous in the film. In fact, it is unequivocally Black.
Someone’s Dead!
“It is T-minus two days until Christmas, Daddy”
Sometimes, impending death is not the focus of a Black Christmas film so much as a longing for those who have already passed. It ain’t a Christmas movie unless someone’s daddy kicks the bucket into their forever nap. This is where we find Baneatta (Regina Taylor) as last year’s A Jenkins Family Christmas starts, pleading with a framed photo of her late father to help her act right and tolerate her family over the holiday.
Baneatta is a bitter, sad woman who is angry at her son Kenny (Anthony Chatmon II) for being gay and coming home with a white partner. She’s also angry at her sister Beverly (Kim Coles) for settling for the wrong men, and at her daughter Simone (Ashley Love-Mills) for not bringing her husband home. Her fury is compounded when a stranger, Brianna (Tammy Townsend), shows up at her door and announces that she is her half-sister. Turns out the dead family patriarch, a pastor, was also a sheisty ne’er-do-well who had a daughter outside of his marriage. From the grave and through a lawyer, he now stipulates that his whole family, including Brianna, must get together to receive their inheritance. The gall of this man, even in death!
Like many Black Christmas films, A Jenkins Family Christmas is heavy on religion and the church. But what sets this movie apart from more typical, not-so-subtly conservative holiday fare is how it calls out Baneatta for her regressive values. Eventually, she realizes she’s gone too far, and her transformation into a reformed Scrooge begins. A Jenkins Family Christmas frames the aftermath of death as both a messy slog through grief and an opportunity to become a kinder and more self-actualized person.
“If my baby wants me to hear her sing, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Christmas Déjà Vu (2021) brings us a holiday-cheer trifecta: a dead parent, fantastic vocals, and a time-traveling guardian angel who teaches us a lesson. A decade after her father’s death, Kandi (Amber Riley) is barely hanging on. Her father died while watching her perform at a Christmas Eve concert she insisted he sit through despite feeling ill; he was the biggest supporter of her music career. Riddled with guilt, she drinks, gets into fights, and misses out on her chance with David (Blue Kimble), a very sexy gentleman. It’s all very dire for our good sis.
But don’t you worry: Kandi’s dead daddy comes back as a white angel ghost man who guides her through an alternate reality in the vein of A Christmas Carol. Unfortunately, even in the dream world where she’s a successful superstar singer, her life is still a mess. She’s still sad and lashing out, still has an issue with alcohol, has developed an issue with drug use, and is even sleeping with two of her bandmates’ husbands!
Again, it cannot be stressed enough that Kandi’s father, a ghost, comes back to her as Gabriel, a white angel, to ensure that she really believes in the spirit of … forgiveness? The season? Redemption? Whatever it is, our happy ending finds Kandi returning to music. It’s all delightfully messy and Black camp at its finest.
Oh no! Gentrification
In Black holiday cinema, we often see holiday cheer persist despite pressing racial-justice issues, including the devastating effects of gentrification: displacement, surging property prices, forced buyouts, and the exclusion of low-income people of color. “Our stories take place in neighborhoods, living rooms, and churches that feel like home,” say Lex and Sydney, hosts of The New Chitlin Circuit, a podcast celebrating Black independent films. In Black Christmas movies, “the magic doesn’t come from a thick blanket of fake snow or prop fruitcakes, but rather a real sense of community.” In You Can’t Fight Christmas (2017) and Holiday Heist (2019), gentrification threatens that community.
“We need to rebrand from the bottom up.”
You Can’t Fight Christmas invites us into the lobby of the Chesterton Hotel, a historic institution in a gentrifying Black neighborhood whose lobby has been decked out for the holidays by designer Leslie Major (Brely Evans). The debt-ridden hotel has been around for decades, serving as a refuge to many legendary Black mononyms: Eartha, Teddy, Smokey, Luther, Billie, Stevie. It’s also the lifeblood of its community: A florist mentions that the hotel’s annual Christmas order keeps him afloat year-round, and a server at the hotel restaurant reveals that he relies on the crucial health benefits of his job.
Christmas enthusiast Leslie falls in love with a Christmas skeptic named Edmund (Andra Fuller), whose business partner Millicent (the icon Persia White) intends to “save” the hotel — and propose to Edmund using pie charts. But the hotel’s history doesn’t matter much to Millicent, who sees the building as an opportunity. “When this hotel started, it was in the ghetto!” she tells Edmund. She proposes that she and Edmund “take advantage” of the hotel’s newly upscale surroundings and make it “great” by essentially turning it into a WeWork for “urban professionals.” Her plan decenters the Black community, but thankfully, Leslie’s decorations lure a Black investor who comes through and saves the day.
“They won’t be happy until they get rid of all of us.”
Gentrification shapes the plot of Holiday Heist, too, set in the South Side of Chicago. We learn that several Black-owned small businesses have closed down in recent years, though Holiday Jewelry, a pillar of the community, is still standing — barely. It’s facing foreclosure, and developers are hounding owner Robert Holiday (Phillip Edward Van Lear) to sell.
Robert’s daughter Jade (Chaley Rose) understands what those developers want: for “this whole place to be filled with avocado-eating hipsters, artisanal cheese shops, and goat-yoga studios,” she tells her friend Racquel (Ayanna Bria Bakari).
Still, the heartfelt beats of a traditional Christmas story shine through. Jade falls for Devin (Tobias Truvillion), a would-be thief who initially lands a job at the Holiday Jewelry store with the intent of casing and then robbing the joint. (Their love is complicated, okay?) The film also wraps us in the warmth, pressure, and expectations of Black familial histories, in which small businesses are often handed down from one generation to the next. As Robert tells one debt collector, “My parents started this business 75 years ago on nothing more than a dream. They handed it down to me and my wife, and I plan to hand it down to my children,” putting the stakes of gentrification in concrete and emotional terms.
Black Love
“I just want a compliment.”
Dating is hard. Dating as a Black woman over 30 is even harder. And Christmastime, when a family is all in your business, makes it damn near impossible. Yet love prevails in holiday movies like 2007’s Perfect Holiday and Merry Liddle Christmas (2019), which gift us the sight of two beautiful Black women getting loved on by nosy family members and gorgeous Black men. Amid the onscreen dearth of healthy representations of Black love, these two films are essential holiday viewing.
Perfect Holiday pairs Gabrielle Union, playing hardworking single mom Nancy, with Benjamin (Morris Chestnut), an aspiring musician and current mall Santa. Nancy’s only Christmas wish is to receive a compliment, which we all know is ludicrous. Expecting the audience to believe Gabrielle THE FACE Union cannot get a compliment? Outlandish, unless we consider the abysmal dating pool for Black women, and especially Black single moms. Once Nancy’s daughter overhears her wish, she shares it with mall Santa Benjamin, and the love story is set in motion. Even more importantly, Nancy starts caring for herself with the support of her two girlfriends, played by the ageless Rachel True and Jill Marie Jones.
“Will you marry me?”
One Kelendria Trene Rowland has moved mountains with the Merry Liddle Christmas film series. The singer and producer plays Jacqui, our lead, an entrepreneur preparing for a glossy holiday magazine photo shoot; she hopes to show off a perfect home and family. In reality, she has overbearing parents, prying siblings, and a lovably clusterfuck family that has a lot to say and even more to do about Jacqui’s crush on her very handsome neighbor Tyler (Thomas Cadrot).
This series is full of Black love, and not just between Jacqui and Tyler as they get together, marry, and have a baby through the trilogy, but also between Jacqui and her family as they learn to trust and rely on each other. To these films, it is as important to show how Jacqui mends her relationship with her family as it is to show her blossoming romance with Tyler. Also, it’s nice to see Kelly Rowland, whom we remember texting into Excel, now talking AI with her sisters. Black women in tech!
Y’all Hunchin’? Family Mess
“You know what? I’m gonna go get Grandma.”
In 2016’s Almost Christmas, an all-star cast asks the bold question: What if every member of a family were trifling? Patriarch Walter (Danny Glover) is a retired widower gathering his four grown children for one last Christmas in their family home, which he intends to sell, unbeknownst to them. There is buttoned-up dentist Cheryl (Kimberly Elise), who is married to no-good Lonnie (J.B. Smoove); we also have single mom and independent woman Rachel (Gabrielle Union), aspiring politician Christian (Romany Malco), Christian’s wife Sonya (Nicole Ari Parker), and baby Evan (Jessie Usher), who is dealing with an addiction to pain medication after being prescribed it for a sports-related injury.
These characters are so caustic to each other. Cheryl wants Rachel to learn to accept help from others. Rachel wants Cheryl to leave Lonnie and his long-gone basketball career behind. Christian is considering selling out the homeless shelter where his mother and her family sought refuge. And no one is paying enough attention to Evan, who becomes erratic due to his grief and growing overreliance on prescription pills.
It all leads to a disastrous Big Family Dinner. Walter finally shares that he is selling the house. Evan begins to come undone, and Rachel, who just caught Lonnie cheating in 4K, invites his mistress Jasmine (Keri Hilson) to dinner to get back at Cheryl, who then calmly leaves to get her gun, nicknamed “grandma.” The mêlée eventually gives way to a happy holiday-movie ending, with Cheryl and Rachel confessing how much they care for each other, Walter recovering his late wife’s sweet potato recipe that recaptures the spirit of the season, Evan finding the help he needs, and Rachel admitting to childhood boo Malachi (Omar Epps) that they should be together.
It’s unadulterated chaos, in which each family member is at once scolded, consoled, made the butt of a joke, and loved on; that is the beautiful familiarity of Black Christmas movies. It’s the balance of pain and light, stress and joy, reality and dreams. It’s real Christmas magic.
By Jumoke Balogun and Mitu Yilma