Every Holiday Season, we are inundated by movies about big-city women who give up their careers for a small-town boyfriend (at Christmas), grinches who are punished for being insufficiently jolly, and kids who help Santa Claus deliver those toys (is there ever a year when he does the job by himself?). It's quite a chore to sort through the thousands for the few that are witty, creative, and not obsessed with boy-girl romance (and the fewer still with gay subtexts), but I've managed to scrounge up a few to make the countdown to December 25th a bit gayer.
10. Christmas in Connecticut (1945). The mother of all "abandoning career for small-town boyfriend" movies. Gay favorite and closet lesbian Barbara Stanwyck plays a driven, cynical magazine writer whose articles about the joys of small-town life draw the attention of a war hero (hunky Dennis Morgan), so as a publicity stunt, she is forced to invite him to "Christmas in Connecticut."
9. A Charlie Brown Christmas. The beset-upon Round-Headed Kid learns the true meaning of Christmas. It has to do with angels and a manger or something, with no Santa Claus in sight. And no hetero-romance. And a jazzy score.
8. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010). Two boys in Lapland discover the real Santa Claus and elves, goat-men imprisoned in a mountain who eat reindeer --- and boys. Lots of buddy-bonding and testosterone, no heterosexual romance. And it's in Finnish!
7. White Christmas (1954). This is a back stage comedy with no connection to Christmas except the last scene (a big plus), and in spite of the twin boy-girl romances, buddy-bonding and gender-inversion are highlighted. Plus we get the drag queen anthem: "God help the mister who comes between me and my sister, and God help the sister who comes between me and my man!"
6. Prep and Landing (2009). Wayne and Lanny, two high-tech Elves in charge of preparing each house for Santa's visit, have to save Christmas. A buddy comedy with none of the "she thinks I'm cute!" heterosexism of that "Have a holly jolly Christmas" thing.
5. Dashing in December (2020). A standard romcom about abandoning the big city to find love in a small town at Christmas, except this time it's a big city guy who finds love with a Cowboy State ranch hand.
4. Billy and Mandy Save Christmas (2005). The kids from the gay-subtext-filled Cartoon Network series, doltish Billy and sinister Mandy, discover that Santa Claus has been turned into a vampire! En route, their frenemy the Grim Reaper falls in love with an androgynous vampire named Baron Von Ghoulish.
3. Home for Christmas (2019): A TV series, not a movie, but it's on Netflix, so you can binge it. Joanna has three weeks to find a boyfriend to bring to Christmas Eve dinner. She auditions five guys and a girl, but ends up bringing the people she loves, including her roommate and his new boyfriend. Score!
1. The Claus Family (2020): Jules discovers that his grandfather is Santa Claus, and he is next in line to take over the family business! Here Santa doesn't distribute gender-stereotyped gifts. Quite a relief from the boy-coded toy trains and girl-coded dolls in his usual bag of tricks.
And Jules is gay-coded -- I kept waiting for him to fall in love with the girl next door, but he didn't. He's more into beefcake. A hundred light years ahead of Hermie the Elf opening a dentist shop in that holly jolly thing.
source http://everydayheterosexism.blogspot.com/2021/11/my-10-favorite-christmas-movies.html