When Lifetime aired The Christmas Setup in December 2020, it did something the network had never done before. It put a gay love story at the center of a holiday rom-com, treating it with the same warmth, cheer, and happily-ever-after energy that straight couples had enjoyed for decades. The film’s ending was not just a romantic resolution for its two lead characters. It was a statement about what LGBTQ holiday movies could look like when they stopped treating queerness as a problem to overcome.
In this article, I will break down exactly what happened in The Christmas Setup ending, why it mattered, and how it shifted the landscape for queer representation in holiday entertainment. Whether you are a fan of the film or just discovering it, understanding its cultural significance helps explain why this movie still gets talked about years later.
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What Is The Christmas Setup About? Plot Overview
The Christmas Setup follows Hugo, a stressed-out New York City corporate lawyer played by Ben Lewis. He travels home to a small town in Ohio with his best friend Madelyn (Ellen Wong) to spend Christmas with his mother Kate, played by Fran Drescher. Kate is the kind of meddling, well-meaning mother who has decided her son needs a love life, and she sets about engineering encounters between Hugo and his high school crush, Patrick (Blake Lee).
Patrick has moved back to their hometown after years away. The two men reconnect over shared memories, skating trips, and a subplot involving local queer history. Hugo discovers that their town once had a vibrant LGBTQ community, including a historic gay bar that was shut down years ago. This storyline weaves real queer history into what could have been a standard holiday romance formula.
The central conflict is not about homophobia or family rejection. Instead, it is about Hugo’s career ambition. He receives a promotion opportunity in London that would pull him away from Patrick, from his family, and from the life he actually wants. This choice between a corporate path and personal happiness is the engine that drives the story toward its climax.
This is worth emphasizing because it was genuinely unusual for a 2020 holiday film. Most LGBTQ stories on television at the time still leaned heavily on coming-out trauma, family rejection, or societal prejudice as their primary conflict. The Christmas Setup swapped those tropes for the same kind of career-versus-love dilemma you would see in any mainstream rom-com.
What The Christmas Setup Ending Meant for LGBTQ Holiday Movies
The Christmas Setup ending sees Hugo make a deliberate choice. He turns down the London promotion, stays in his hometown, and commits to building a life with Patrick. The film closes with the couple together, surrounded by family and community, celebrating Christmas with the kind of unambiguous joy that holiday movies are known for.
On the surface, this ending looks like every other holiday rom-com finale. That is exactly the point. By giving Hugo and Patrick the same warm, optimistic, conflict-free resolution that straight couples get in films like The Holiday or Christmas Under Wraps, The Christmas Setup ending told viewers that queer love stories deserve the same treatment.
Here is what made that ending significant in concrete terms:
1. No tragic ending. For years, LGBTQ characters in film and television were subjected to what media critics call the “Bury Your Gays” trope, where queer characters meet unhappy or fatal ends. The Christmas Setup ending refused that tradition entirely. Hugo and Patrick get their happy ending, full stop.
2. No coming-out crisis. The film never frames Hugo’s sexuality as something that needs to be confessed, hidden, or forgiven. His mother already knows and approves. His community accepts him. The conflict is external to his identity as a gay man.
3. Family celebration, not family conflict. Kate (Fran Drescher) is not a source of tension. She is actively rooting for her son’s romance. The ending shows the couple embraced by family, modeling the kind of unconditional acceptance that many LGBTQ viewers rarely see in holiday media.
4. Queer history is honored. The subplot about the town’s lost gay bar gives the ending extra weight. Hugo and Patrick’s love story is placed within a broader context of queer community history, suggesting that their happiness is part of a longer legacy rather than an isolated moment.
5. The “normal rom-com” treatment. Perhaps the most powerful thing about the ending is how unremarkable it tries to be. The film is not asking viewers to applaud itself for being progressive. It simply presents a gay love story with the same narrative respect and genre conventions as any other holiday romance.
Why The Christmas Setup Was Groundbreaking for LGBTQ Representation
The Christmas Setup was Lifetime’s first LGBTQ-themed holiday movie. That fact alone made it historic, but the details of how it was made matter just as much as the milestone itself.
Lifetime worked with GLAAD during the development and production process. GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, consulted on the film to ensure authentic representation rather than a token gesture. This behind-the-scenes involvement helped the film avoid common pitfalls, including stereotyped characterization and the reduction of queer characters to sidekick roles.
The film also cast openly queer actors in its lead roles. Ben Lewis and Blake Lee, who play Hugo and Patrick, are married to each other in real life. This casting choice brought a layer of authenticity to the romance that audiences immediately noticed. Their on-screen chemistry was not manufactured; it was real.
Fran Drescher’s involvement added another dimension. As a longtime LGBTQ icon and activist, her presence as the supportive mother carried cultural weight for viewers familiar with her advocacy work and her own public support for queer communities.
Director Pat Mills, an openly gay filmmaker, brought a personal understanding of the material. His direction ensured that the film’s humor, romance, and emotional beats felt genuine rather than filtered through an outsider’s perspective. The result was a movie that LGBTQ viewers recognized as made for them, not just about them.
The Cultural Impact on Holiday Movie Genre
The Christmas Setup ending did not just satisfy viewers in the moment. It opened a door that other networks and studios began walking through. In the years following its release, the holiday movie landscape shifted noticeably.
Before The Christmas Setup, LGBTQ characters in holiday films were rare and often relegated to indie productions with limited distribution. Mainstream networks like Hallmark and Lifetime had built their holiday empires almost exclusively on heterosexual romance. The Christmas Setup challenged that default by proving that a same-sex love story could fit seamlessly into the established holiday rom-com formula.
After the film aired, other productions followed. Netflix released Single All The Way in 2021, another gay holiday rom-com that also leaned into joyful, trauma-free storytelling. Hallmark, which had been slower to include LGBTQ storylines, began incorporating queer characters into its holiday lineup. The momentum that The Christmas Setup helped create continued to build.
The film also changed audience expectations. LGBTQ viewers who had grown accustomed to scanning holiday movie schedules for any queer content suddenly had options. Forum discussions from communities like r/MenLovingMenMedia and r/ainbow consistently highlight The Christmas Setup as a turning point, with users recommending it alongside Single All The Way as essential viewing.
What the ending specifically demonstrated was that LGBTQ holiday movies did not need to justify their existence through heavy drama or social issue storytelling. They could simply be warm, funny, and romantic. That creative permission, more than any single plot point, is the lasting legacy of The Christmas Setup ending.
Real-Life Married Couple Ben Lewis and Blake Lee
One of the most talked-about aspects of The Christmas Setup was the casting of Ben Lewis and Blake Lee as the romantic leads. The two actors are married in real life, and their genuine relationship brought an immediate warmth to the screen that scripted chemistry rarely achieves.
Viewers consistently praised the couple’s natural dynamic. Forum users across Reddit communities highlighted how their real-life connection made the romance feel lived-in and believable. You can see it in the small moments, the casual touches, the inside jokes, and the comfort level between two people who actually know each other deeply.
This casting choice was also symbolically important. By placing a real queer couple at the center of a mainstream holiday film, Lifetime signaled that LGBTQ actors could lead romantic stories without their identity being treated as a limitation. The film trusted its queer leads to carry the same emotional weight that straight leads have carried in hundreds of holiday movies before them.
For audiences, seeing a real married couple portray an on-screen romance added a layer of joy that went beyond the fictional story. It was a reminder that the love being depicted on screen exists in the real world, not just in a screenplay.
How The Christmas Setup Compared to Hallmark Holiday Movies
The comparison to Hallmark is almost unavoidable when discussing holiday rom-coms, and it is especially relevant here. Hallmark had dominated the holiday movie market for years with a formula that was overwhelmingly straight, white, and predictable in its storytelling choices.
The Christmas Setup borrowed the familiar elements of that formula, the small-town setting, the holiday traditions, the meddling matchmaker, the career-versus-love dilemma, and simply swapped the gender of one lead. By doing so, it made something that felt both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new.
Hallmark faced public criticism in 2019 and 2020 for its slow approach to LGBTQ inclusion. The network had previously pulled an ad featuring a same-sex wedding and later apologized after backlash. The Christmas Setup, airing on a competing network, arrived at a moment when audiences were actively demanding better representation from the genre’s biggest players.
The film proved that the formula worked with queer leads. Ratings and critical reception were strong enough that Lifetime continued investing in diverse holiday content. Hallmark eventually followed suit, but The Christmas Setup helped establish that LGBTQ holiday movies could succeed commercially without compromising their queer stories for broader appeal.
FAQs
What is the movie The Christmas Setup about?
The Christmas Setup is a 2020 Lifetime holiday rom-com about Hugo, a New York lawyer who returns to his small hometown for Christmas and reconnects with his high school crush Patrick. His mother Kate, played by Fran Drescher, actively plays matchmaker. The film was Lifetime’s first LGBTQ-themed Christmas movie.
Where was the movie The Christmas Setup filmed?
The Christmas Setup was filmed in Ottawa, Canada, despite being set in a fictional small town in Ohio. Production took advantage of Ottawa’s winter scenery to create the film’s cozy holiday atmosphere.
Does Hallmark promote LGBTQ holiday movies?
Hallmark has begun including LGBTQ characters and storylines in its holiday movies in recent years, but it was slower to do so than Lifetime. The Christmas Setup, which aired on Lifetime in 2020, helped push the genre toward greater LGBTQ inclusion across multiple networks.
Conclusion
The Christmas Setup ending mattered because it gave a gay couple the exact kind of joyful, uncomplicated happily-ever-after that holiday movies had been reserving for straight couples for decades. Hugo chose love over a promotion, his family celebrated that choice, and no one treated his sexuality as a source of conflict. That simplicity was the entire point.
For LGBTQ viewers who had spent years watching holiday rom-coms that never reflected their own lives, The Christmas Setup ending was a meaningful correction. It proved that queer love stories could thrive within the cozy, feel-good formula of a holiday film, and it helped open the door for a wave of more inclusive holiday content that followed. If you want to understand how representation in holiday movies changed, The Christmas Setup is the film where that shift became undeniable.