The Best Black Romantic (& Delightfully Corny) Christmas Movies Of The Season

There was a tweet (we refuse to call them Xeets or posts or whatever) going around about how so many recent romantic comedies feel “simultaneously too self-aware and reductive about the genre.” The user went on to explain that the rom-coms of today are either too busy poking fun at the genre or trying so hard not to be a formulaic rom-com (the formula works, don’t mess with it) that they lose the magic of what makes romantic movies so great: a heavy dose of earnestness. These observations are astute, and they confirm our theory about why we all love a cozy, sometimes corny (in the best way) Christmas romance movie. You can’t get more earnest than an overly saccharine plot about a workaholic city woman who reluctantly goes to a small town — sometimes her hometown — during the holidays only to discover, also reluctantly, that the true meaning of the season is to fall in love with a man who works with his hands and usually wears plaid. Or the ones about discovering that there’s more to life than work. Of course, life is about family (where one parent is played by one of our collective Black celebrity aunties like Loretta Devine or Sheryl Lee Ralph), romantic love (the kind that grows over a tight one hour and 30 minute runtime and culminates in a chaste kiss), and Christmas! 

Not only do most of these stories go against all our beliefs and values as workaholic women who live in big cities, but they also aren’t as horny as we typically prefer our  movies to be. And yet, we all watch them at this time of year. For whatever reason, they hit the spot like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold, snowy, Christmas night. The thing is, there are so many of these movies that sifting through the really bad to get to the good (The Preacher’s Wife, Last Holiday) to the good-bad (let’s be honest, most Hallmark Holiday movies all fall on the so-bad-it’s-good spectrum) can be tough, and a lot of these Best Romantic Holiday Movies roundups are as white as the snow that falls at the most pivotal moments in said films. But as we know, the best Christmas movies are Black. There are the classics (like This Christmas and Best Man Holiday) and in the past few years, we’ve seen a new crop of corny rom-com queens emerge like Kat Graham, Christina Milian, Kelly Rowland, Tia and Tamara Mowry, and BRANDY (!!) just to name a few. So, here’s a breakdown of the best and the most earnest (read: corniest, most comforting, oddly calming) Black Christmas movies you should watch this season.