WETHERSFIELD, Conn. (AP) — “Christmas at Pemberley” and “Romance at the Deer Lodge” may never make it to Oscar night, but legions of fans still love these sweet but predictable holiday films — and this season, many are making pilgrimages to where their favorite scenes were filmed.
That's because Connecticut—home to at least 22 holiday movies from Hallmark, Lifetime and others—is promoting tours of the quaint Christmas card towns and villages featured in this booming movie market; places where a busy corporate lawyer can come home for the holidays and cross paths with a former classmate in a plaid shirt who now runs a Christmas tree farm. (Spoiler: they live happily ever after.)
“It's exciting just to know that something was in the movie and we can actually see it visually,” said Abby Rumfelt of Morganton, N.C., after getting off a tour bus in Wethersfield, Conn., one of the holiday movie tour stops.
Rumfelt was among 53 people, mostly women, on the recent weeklong “Hallmark Movie Christmas Tour,” organized by Mayfield Tours of Spartanburg, South Carolina. On the bus, fans watched the same films as they rode from stop to stop.
To plan the tour, co-owner Debbie Mayfield used the Connecticut Christmas Movie Trail map, which launched last year in the wintry New England state to capitalize on the growing Christmas movie craze.
Mayfield, who co-owns the company with her husband Ken, said this is their first Christmas tour of holiday movie theaters in Connecticut and other northeastern states. It included hotel accommodations, meals, tickets and even a stop at a Rockettes concert in New York. It sold out in two weeks.
With snow flurries in the air and Christmas carols blaring from the speaker, the group stopped for lunch at the Family Market in Comstock Ferret, where portions of the Hallmark movies “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane” and “Rediscovering Christmas” were filmed.
Once home to America's oldest seed company, the store is located in a historic district known for its stately buildings from the 1700s and 1800s. It's the perfect setting for a holiday movie. Even your local country store sells T-shirts with Hallmark's crown logo and the phrase, “I'm living in a Christmas movie.” Wethersfield, CT 06109.”
“People know about us now,” said Julia Coulouris, who co-owns the market with her husband Spyros, giving some of the credit to the film. “And you see these things on Instagram and things like that, where people are tagging it and posting it.”
Christmas movies are big business and a big deal for fans.
The idea of holiday movies dates back to the 1940s, when Hollywood produced such classics as It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut, which were actually filmed at Warner Bros. Studios. in Burbank, California.
In 2006, five years after the Hallmark Channel launched on television, Hallmark “struck gold” with the romantic movie “A Christmas Card,” said Joanna Wilson, author of “It's the Season of Television: An Encyclopedia of Christmas Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies.”
“Hallmark saw these high ratings and then started creating this format and this formula using cliches, and now it has become their dominant formula that they create for their Christmas TV romances,” she said.
The holiday movie industry, estimated to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has expanded beyond Hallmark and Lifetime. Today, a combination of cable and broadcast networks, streaming platforms and direct-to-video producers produce about 100 new films annually, Wilson said. The genre has also expanded, introducing characters from a wider range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as LGBTQ+ storylines.
However, the formula remains the same. And fans are still hungry for a G-rated love story.
“They want to see people coming together. They want to see these romances. That's part of the hope of the season,” she said. “Who doesn't love love? And it always has a predictable happy ending.”
Hazel Duncan, 83, of Forest City, North Carolina, said she and her husband, Owen, 65, enjoy watching movies together year-round because they are cute and family-friendly. They also take her back to the young couple's early years, when life seemed simpler.
“Sometimes we hold hands,” she said. “It's very nice. We have two chairs in a very small bedroom, and we have a TV in there. And we close the doors, and it's just our time together in the evening.”
Falling in love again… with the state
Connecticut Marketing Director Anthony M. Anthony said the Christmas Movie Trail is part of a multifaceted rebranding project launched in 2023 that promotes the state not only as a tourism destination, but also as a place to work and live.
“So, what better way to highlight our communities as a place to call home than through filmmaking?” – he said.
However, debate continues in the state Capitol over whether to eliminate or limit tax breaks for the film industry, which could jeopardize how many more of those films will be produced locally.
Cristina Nieves and her 30-year-old husband Raul already live in Connecticut and are “little by little” going down this path.
She said it was a chance to explore new places in the state, such as the carousel at Bushnell Park in Hartford, where a scene from the movie “Always the Haunting of Christmas Day” was filmed.
It also inspired Nieves to convince her husband—not exactly a movie fan—to join her at the tree lighting and Christmas parade in their hometown of Windsor Locks.
“I said, look, let me milk this Hallmark thing as long as I can, okay?” she said.
