Justice
Why Do Christmas Movies Hate Cities So Much?
The typical plots of holiday rom-coms involve women finding love in a make-believe small town—and getting out of the cruel big city.
If the deluge of holiday rom-coms from the likes of Hallmark, Lifetime, and more recently Netflix are to be believed, the city is no place for love.
Take Lauren Gabriel, heroine of the new Hallmark Channel holiday movie Christmas Town. She hits a dead end in Boston with her self-absorbed boyfriend and also the city’s white-hot job market. So she leaves the big city in search of the simple life (on a train!) and gets stuck in picture-perfect “Grandon Falls,” a small town so serious about Christmas it’s nicknamed after the holiday. And there—spoiler alert!—she finds the perfect guy.