Happiest Season: Harmful or Helpful for the LGBTQ Community It Claims to Represent?

On November 25, 2020, Clea Duvall’s feature debut Happiest Season premiered on Hulu to popular and critical success. The film, which stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as a lesbian couple going home to “meet the parents” for the holidays, has been coined “The Lesbian Christmas Movie” by the liberal media. While “The Lesbian Christmas Movie” is undoubtedly a more compelling name than “Happiest Season,” the question of just how queer the film is remains a point of contention. To probe this question, I will first establish the theoretical framework of the movie, before analyzing the arc of the film itself, and finally examining the film’s real-world implications within the United States and abroad. As this paper will show, by failing to challenge gender stereotypes/patriarchy, reducing queer identity to “coming out,” and reproducing neoliberalism, Happiest Season is not a radical breakthrough film but ultimately just another straight movie.

Before delving into more detailed analysis, I’d like to establish a running vocabulary for the framework of the movie. According to IMDb, the movie’s plot summary is: “Meeting your girlfriend’s family for the first time can be tough. Planning to propose at her family’s annual Christmas dinner — until you realize that they don’t even know she’s gay — is even harder. When Abby Holland (Kristen Stewart) learns that Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis) has kept their relationship a secret from her family, she begins to question the girlfriend she thought she knew” (IMDb). When viewing, it is important to ground the movie within an American concept of sexuality where sexual behavior mirrors sexual identification; these identifications are clearly bracketed into separate categories, such as “lesbian,” “gay,” “bi,” “trans,” and “queer.” Within this context, though gender malleability is becoming more common, gender expression generally mirrors gender identity. Thus, the movie’s central tension — that Harper’s parents don’t know that she is gay — hinges on the idea of an immutable, fixed self (Wekker, 120). Since the self is immutable, whatever is not mainstream becomes non-normative and as an extension, queer. When I use the term “queer” throughout this essay, I am referring to entities outside of the mainstream understanding of personhood, where queerness is a tool that can be levied by the state or in pop-culture to other categories of people (Budhiraja, 137). Thus, Happiest Season, which represents a mainstream version of lesbianism, should not be understood as an LGBTQ film if LGBTQ is understood to encompass and be representative of the queer experience in the United States.

Though the movie situates the Caldwell family’s obsession with appearances as the source of Harper’s inability to come out to them, the movie itself shows a very “acceptable” and mainstream depiction of lesbianism even when the women are at their shared apartment. In the opening scene, we see Abby and Harper out for a neighborhood Christmas walk. The couple is demonstrating public displays of affection — holding hands, cuddling. By situating the couple within a suburban setting and having them obviously present as a couple, the movie signals to the viewers that a) the women are middle-class and b) they are proudly committed to each other regardless of the views of others. Later on, inside the women’s apartment, Abby makes breakfast for Harper as she dozes in their shared queen-sized bed; the viewer sees photos of the couple adorning the windowsill. These domestic scenes establish that in all the important ways, Abby and Harper are normal — the only thing that might set them apart from their neighbors is who they love and what they do in bed. (The only other non-normative thing about the couple is the fact that Abby’s parents are dead, though as I’ll discuss later, this information proves to be little more than a plot-pusher.) “Normalizing” the couple also renders ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ as distinct spheres of influence, when historically most people’s lived experiences are not accounted for by this distinction — for example, in reality Abby’s and Harper’s lives are affected not just by homophobia but also sexism (Valentine, 62). Thus, when the couple actually goes to Harper’s parents’ home, the movie’s set up has allowed the viewer to only consider the stakes in regard to sexuality, despite the fact that for most queer people, their sexuality intersects with a plethora of other identifiers, such as race, ethnicity, age, and class (Budhiraja, 135).

While the movie relies on the couple being normative to highlight their sexuality, the movie also affirms traditional gender roles by relying on gender stereotypes to legitimize various plot points. The most conspicuous example is the fact that Abby, the more masculine presenting of the couple, wants to propose to Harper, the femme girlfriend figure. While it is easy to excuse these presentations as the movie just presenting a believable lesbian pairing — and in some regard, the women’s blatant rejection of the notion that presenting more masculine is due to circumstance or in direct response to oppressive homophobia (Valentine, 52; Altman, 91) is good — the movie uses gender stereotypes to help cement Harper’s inclusion in her upper-crust world where Abby is the out-of-sorts butch girlfriend. The evidence is Abby’s visual link to Riley, Harper’s high school girlfriend and the only “out”¹ lesbian in town. Riley is quite literally never seen without a black blazer on throughout the entire movie. Likewise, Abby never dons a skirt, and also wears black blazers or cardigans anytime she dresses up. This creates a stark contrast from before where Abby and Harper seamlessly blend in with their surroundings. Now, the movie conflates ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ but only to visually cue that Riley, and by extension Abby, ascribe to a different “lifestyle” and thus are not accepted within the Caldwell’s milieu. By cherry picking more “palatable” aspects of sexuality and gender to further the plot, the movie proves to value the viewer’s cognitive consonance over a more nuanced depiction of lesbianism (e.g., one where Riley can be queer and still wear a color lighter than navy).

Along with this strict adherence to gender stereotypes, heteronormativity animates the entire plot of the film. In an early scene, we meet John, Abby’s gay best friend, and also the only outsider to the Caldwell world. Once John learns that Abby plans to propose to Harper, he interjects, “You and Abby have a perfect relationship. Why would you want to ruin that by engaging in one of the most archaic institutions in the history of the human race…trapping her in a box of heteronormativity and trying to make her your property?” Abby replies that Harper is her person, she wants the entire world to know, and furthermore, she plans to propose on Christmas morning after asking for Mr. Caldwell’s blessing. John snarkily replies, “Going to ask dad for his blessing and propose on Christmas morning? Way to stick it to the patriarchy, really well done.” This pivotal conversation preempts the rest of John and Abby’s conversations throughout the movie — every day or so while at the Caldwell’s, Abby will call John to vent or for advice, and he will reply with something like, “Have you managed to get a man’s permission to take control of an adult human woman yet?” However, these sentiments are not simply humorous remarks. John is getting at the idea that above all else, marriage is a financial compact, one that traditionally has been negotiated within the middle-class (Wekker, 123). By not only wanting to marry Harper but also going through her dad to achieve this goal, Abby — or perhaps the film — blindly accepts and upholds a system of hierarchy/oppression under which a woman like her is only relatively “freed.”

This dependence on the rich, white patriarch does not end with Abby wanting to propose; in fact, all four Caldwell women — Harper, her two sisters, and their mom Tipper — exist in the peripheries of their dad’s story. For example, when Mr. Caldwell introduces the three daughters to his benefactors, he refers to Harper as his “powerhouse,” Sloane as his “super mom,” and Jane as “the only reason he knows how to work the internet in the house.” These might be funny descriptions except the film demonstrates all three grown women bending over backwards to fulfill molds their father has cast. Harper doesn’t challenge her parents for throwing her high school boyfriend Connor on her. Sloane leverages her own marriage as a source of power in the film to prove that she is a good wife and mom. Tipper’s existence seems to depend on elevating her husband’s mayoral campaign; throughout the movie, she obsessively documents her “picture perfect“ family, which notably does not include Abby. Though Abby is the only character to voice the question, “Do you think he likes me?” the desire to be “the favorite” cements a sibling rivalry which underscores the entire film and ultimately leads to Harper’s outing. The movie does make light of how ridiculous these women are being — either through Sloane and Harper’s ice-skating race that ends in a catfight or Jane’s eagerness to fix the router or Tipper’s huge iPad that accompanies here everywhere lest she miss a photo-op — but without truly challenging the notion that they should live for Mr. Caldwell’s acceptance. To break from the father’s norms is not an option that any of the characters, or the movie, ever considers.

As a result of the movie’s dependence on the theme of father-pleasing, the movie brushes over homosexuality’s pathologization in society. Returning to the idea of an immutable self, historically within the western world, individuals who exhibited homoerotic desire were thought of as “deviant,” societal problems that need to be solved. With the rise of the homophile movement and the public vs private debate, homosexuality was de-listed from the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. “Acceptable” gays and lesbians, who otherwise conformed to middle-class values, used this fixed identitarian model to amass political power, despite fixed identities also being the basis for oppression of more marginal members of society (Budhiraja, 136). In many ways, Harper represents a modern holdover from The Lavender Movement, a group of middle to upper class lesbians who strove to be championed by the larger women’s movement and thus disavowed conspicuous transgression of any sort (Valentine, 48). These women believed that women who adhered to the butch/femme trope were of a “false consciousness” — thus, Harper’s grave necessity to closet Abby makes sense as her own societal status correlates to her feminist predecessors (Valentine, 52). I give this short background not to villainize Harper but to illuminate the political motives for staying “in the closet” or presenting in normative ways (i.e., Harper’s midi dresses and flowing, womanly blouses). At the onset of the movie, when Harper says to Abby, “Don’t say that we’re together. Don’t mention that you’re gay. I think it would be better to avoid it,” it makes sense on some innate level that Harper doesn’t want to upset her parents. However, as more time goes on, the implications of pathologizing sexuality are left in the dust in favor of a more family-friendly sibling rivalry theme.

This shift in the movie’s focus is best exemplified through Harper’s “outing.” During the Caldwell Annual Christmas Eve Party, Abby ends things with Harper, and Harper chases after Abby to her room in the basement. A dramatic scene follows: Abby accuses Harper of trying to hide her, and Harper counters that she is trying to hide herself. As the two lean in for a teary kiss, the camera swivels to Sloane who stumbles in looking for her 10-year-old twins. From a production standpoint, this sequence is one of the only in the entire movie that is shot on handheld camera. For the audience, the handheld camera produces the effect of imposing on a private moment — the viewer has a terrible pit in their stomach because they know Sloane is coming — and the following camera swivel to Sloane is reminiscent of an “Aha, you’ve been caught on live-action camera!” moment. This reveal leads to a minutes long catfight as Harper tries — and fails — to stop Sloane from “outing” her in front of the entire party in the living room upstairs. You would think, given this is an “LGBTQ holiday rom com,” that after Sloane “outs” Harper, the movie would unpack the implications of Harper being gay in her strait-laced family and relate this development back to Abby and Harper’s romance. Instead, the movie brushes past Sloane’s reveal just for Harper to blurt out Sloane’s secret — she and her husband have been secretly separated this whole time! What a shocker! Thus, the scene transitions instantly from being about Harper’s deviant sexuality to being about the sister rivalry. Abby, the true outsider to the ethos of the family, is left to leave the house and process her feelings unnoticed, while the Caldwell family deals with their collective problems for the first time as a cohesive unit inside. Thus, the film’s resolution is not related to the climax — Harper and Abby’s closeted relationship — at all; Abby has become a foil for the Caldwells’ family drama.

The film’s evolution points to an important realization: when the movie explicitly deals with sexuality, it is only in terms of “coming out”; it fails to acknowledge the fuller experiences of LGBTQ people in the real world. In the very beginning of the film, when Harper first admits to Abby that she never came out to her parents, there is a consensus on the part of Harper, Abby, and the film that “coming out” is the morally correct thing to do. In this case, since Harper was bringing Abby to her parents’ house under the false pretense that Abby was her underprivileged orphan roommate, there was a larger moral obligation on Harper’s part to be honest with Abby about the situation. However, the implicit message sent by the film, and echoed by John’s emotional monologue once Abby leaves the Christmas Eve Party in tears, is that by “coming out,” one becomes a real gay. John tells Abby, “Harper not coming out to her parents has nothing to do with you.” When Abby replies that it has a whole lot to do with her, John empathizes with Harper by saying that “everyone’s story is different” and that when someone decides to come out “you have to be ready…you can’t do it for anybody else.” This dialogue is aligned with the belief that the self is immutable, and by stepping into your identity, you will become rightfully fulfilled. In focusing on the phenomenon of “coming out,” the film reduces LGBTQ-issues to questions of self-acceptance rather than striving to holistically represent the lived experience of an LGBTQ person in the United States today.

Furthermore, by focusing on “coming out,” the movie never demonstrates that Harper and the Caldwell family undergo serious character development in regard to their views on sexuality. After Harper’s and Sloane’s secrets are both revealed, the sisters band together to confront their father. Sloane charges, “We’ve spent our entire lives trying to prove ourselves to you.” Stupefied, Mr. Caldwell retreats to his study to contemplate. Moments later, Tipper joins him and delivers an emotional monologue, stating, “We have one daughter afraid to tell us she is unhappy in her marriage, another daughter who just got her heart broken because she was afraid to tell us who she really loves, and Jane is only okay because we gave up on her.” While this moment is touching to an extent, a closer look at how the film got us here reveals some pitfalls. The film derives its tension and dramatic irony by having the audience in on a secret — Abby and Harper are in a relationship. However, there is little backstory or contextualization for why this secret must be maintained in the first place. Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell are portrayed as ridiculously self-absorbed but not intensely homophobic. Therefore, there is a disconnect between the climax of the film — Harper’s outing by Sloane — and the resolution of the film — Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell’s realization that they should practice more compassion and less judgement within their family. When Tipper confronts her husband, she does not question her own internalized homophobia. She simply expresses remorse over Harper’s heartbreak. Mr. Caldwell is being asked to have compassion; however, understanding the necessity of basic human compassion is not the same as understanding historical, societal oppression. Rather than unpacking the internalized homophobia and bias that informed both Harper’s fear to be herself with her parents and her parents’ own snide comments about Riley’s sexuality, the film becomes complicit in its own contribution to a systemically oppressive system. The overwhelming message is that because Harper “came out,” not only did she become her true authentic self but also all conflicts in the family can now be resolved.

After analyzing the arc of the movie, then, the question emerges of who this movie is for. In the initial 2018 Sony Pictures press release, Hannah Minghella, then-President of TriStar Pictures, reportedly says, “Happiest Season is a refreshingly modern comedy about the complexity of navigating romantic relationships and family dynamics” (Sony). In an October 2020 press release after the acquisition of the film by Hulu, Clea Duvall, director and co-writer, is quoted, “I am beyond grateful to Hulu for providing an incredible home for Happiest Season, and I’ll forever cherish my journey with Sony Pictures who felt just as strongly as I did about the value of bringing the first major LGBTQ+ holiday rom-com to audiences” (Sony). This quote is the only official Sony statement that mentions anything to do with the LGBTQ community. In the same press release, Duvall continues on to say, “I’m hopeful that this universal story, told through a unique lens, will join the long list of holiday classics that continue to bring all of us so much joy and happiness” (Sony). In an interview a month later with IndieWire, Duvall of romantic comedies says, “It’s a very heterosexual genre and to be able to have all the same feelings and see a story that feels familiar, that you connect with, but that also has two women at the center, it shouldn’t seem that radical, but it kind of is.” Furthermore, “I really wanted the movie to feel accessible to all audiences. It’s exciting to me that there are people who might be going into this movie thinking that it might not be for them, and then they will still have a character that they connect with, and that they will feel seen in a different way” (Erbland). These quotes illuminate an obvious incongruity: “refreshingly modern” and “first major LGBTQ holiday rom com” are two different things; so are “radical” and “universal story” or “accessible to all audiences.”

The tension evidenced between the executive’s statements and artist’s statements is a perfect example of neoliberalism. At the time of Hannah Minghella’s above quote, Happiest Season was co-financed by TriStar Pictures, a production company under Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, and Entertainment One (eOne), an independent studio under Hasbro (Sony). Filming wrapped in late February, right before the pandemic hit, and originally, the film was set to premiere in theaters on November 20, 2020. However, in light of closing theaters, the film was later acquired by streaming-platform Hulu for a November 25th U.S. premiere; Sony would maintain the international rights. The point here is that Happiest Season is not the result of Clea Duvall’s hopes and wishes but rather the outcome of a series of business negotiations within the larger capitalistic film industrial complex. In other words, Happiest Season is the brainchild of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is “the ideology that capitalism is an overall good and that social progress, historically a liberal ideal, is best achieved through capitalism” (Renegade Cut). Under neoliberalism, “progress” is determined by profitability. This can imply that the greenlight on Happiest Season is a hallmark of U.S. society’s progression. Nevertheless, neoliberalism demands that the economically convenient status quo be maintained (Renegade Cut), which explains many of the movie’s “conventional” choices, from its casting, middle-class framing, and traditional plot.

Within the context of neoliberalism, the film’s absence of dialogue in regard to Harper’s class also becomes re-illuminated. The comedic beats once Abby and Harper arrive at the Caldwell’s rely heavily on the fact that the family believes Abby is an orphan and so has nowhere to go for the holidays. The Caldwells, blowing this fact out of proportion, become comically solemn anytime they talk to Abby. Other moments of ridiculousness occur when Abby tells Mr. Caldwell she is receiving her MFA from Cornell in Art History, and he replies that the summer he spent museum-hopping in Paris made him the man he is today; or when Tipper finds Abby in the storage closet and exclaims “Abby, what are you doing in the closet?!” After Abby says she’d been sleepwalking (she’d been sneaking to see Harper), TIpper proceeds to tell Abby that the last time she took an Ambien she bought a racehorse online. The Caldwells are so insanely out of touch in these moments that the audience never seriously critiques their wealth or the echelon of society they belong to. Furthermore, by joking that the Caldwells accept Abby’s lack of elegance (and literally less expensive clothes) because she is an orphan, the movie brushes over the implications of Abby being a more working-class lesbian — a fact that historically would be inextricably linked to her more masculine presentation (Valentine, 46). The only moment that points to this movie being produced by a homosexual woman is when Sloane, in the middle of fighting Harper during the Christmas Eve Party, calls out to Abby, “Stay out of this Sappho!” (Sappho is thought to be the one of the earliest attested lesbian poets in western literature; lesbians are called such because Sappho was from the island of Lesbos.) Though Sappho is a queer icon in some respects, I only understood this reference because I’ve had the privilege of attending an elitist prep school where students were required to take Latin and discussed Sappho in class. Therefore, even in acknowledging queer culture, the movie subtly reveals an exclusive target demographic — perhaps one that finds a movie about a family that eats dinner every night in a country club where women weren’t allowed to have their own membership until the early 2000s “accessible.”

Thus, as an “LGBTQ holiday rom com,” Happiest Season fills some representative gaps while leaving many far open. According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ youth in the United States identify in over 100 different sexual orientations and over 100 different gender identities. In addition, 80% of LGBTQ youth say that LGBTQ celebrities positively impact how they feel about being LGBTQ themselves (The Trevor Project). Based on my own lived experiences as a gay woman in the United States, I would concur with this statistic. I loved Happiest Season because I found it emotionally gripping, and it was awesome to see two women making out — or even just holding hands — on screen. However, I wholeheartedly believe that my easy enjoyment of the film only came from the fact that I understand that western notions of sexual orientation carry “deep strands of permanency, stability, fixity, and near-impermeability to change” (Wekker, 132). Yet before this class, I spent 2 years stressed about how my gender expression must align or not align with my gender identity and sexual orientation. The two options presented by this movie of how to be a correct lesbian, either constantly in a butch manner or always in feminine styles (both of which in a larger sense are irrelevant to me because I am not white or wealthy or financially stable enough to consider marriage), would have deeply stymied and confused me. It becomes unclear how a movie can both prioritize the cognitive consonance of all audiences while also holistically representing the LGBTQ experience.

This being said, a movie being a corporate investment and thus prioritizing “mainstream” voices is not particular to Happiest Season; what does make Happiest Season unique, however, is that it represents the only voice in its purported genre “LGBTQ holiday rom com,” and viewers in the United States will experience this movie in the comfort of their homes. Earlier in 2020, Netflix premiered its own lesbian rom com entitled The Half of It. According to IMDb the film’s premise is “A shy, introverted, Chinese-American, straight-A student finds herself helping the school jock woo the girl they both secretly love. In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find connection in the most unlikely of places” (IMDb). Alice Wu, the writer and director of the film, also had to contend with her film being acquired by a streaming platform after initially being produced for the screen. Speaking about the results of a poll taken outside of Phoenix, Arizona wherein many viewers said they found the film “excellent” but wouldn’t recommend it to their friends, Wu says she realized “people are not going to go to the theater to watch this movie but in the privacy of their own home… they might press play” (Ramos). Through watching her film, Wu hopes its messages can rub off on rural residents. “In towns that are majority white, there’s always one immigrant family, or there’s always one POC family,” Wu says. “So maybe this movie will make people think about that, or that one kid who’s a bit different, whether they’re coming out as queer, or whether it’s coming out as something else.”

The major difference to consider between The Half of It and Happiest Season are the ways in which The Half of It does push against societal norms. The Half of It centers an Asian lead, Ellie Chu, who is played by Leah Lewis, a far less famous actor than Kristen Stewart. In addition, Ellie Chu is a lot less glamorous than Abby Holland. Ellie is poorer, lives in a more remote location, and lacks the status that comes with age. Without commenting on either film from a production standpoint, the varying reception of the films reflects these discrepancies. When The Half of It premiered, it opened to generally positive reviews. When Happiest Season premiered, it broke Hulu’s record for opening weekend views of an original film, and the film brought in more new subscribers than any previous feature (Arthur). These figures, taken in light of Wu’s point that media — and especially media streamed in private — can have reverberating effects on people’s perception of a social issue, demonstrate that as a “first” in its field, Happiest Season bears the burden of representation. This burdened is heightened given Happiest Season depicts a more “normative” story. Thus, the funny catchphrase “The Lesbian Christmas Movie” has dangerous implications if viewers disconnected from the LGBTQ community absorb the messages of Happiest Season as representative of the LGBTQ community — especially if the majority of the LGBTQ community, whose identities do intersect with their class, race, ethnicity, ability, age, etc., are still not fully accepted, actively othered, or queered by both the state and pop culture within the United States today.

Representation in Happiest Season is also important considering the United States’ role as a global model of homosexuality. Since the Stonewall riot in Greenwich Village, NYC, the United States is thought to be the birth of the global gay liberation movement (Altman, 87). Given the United States’ global reputation and the way ideas about identity are speedily exchanged on the internet, primarily through metropolitan areas, the previously parsed implications of Happiest Season gain new significance. From the perspective of a nation trying to arbitrate the influx of these foreign concepts of identity — since the United States is unique in its insistence that sexual behavior/expression must correlate to sexual identity and to a lesser extent its adherence to notions of the immutable self — it is easy to see how the American media can be seen as another stepping-stone of neocolonialism (Altman, 94). On a more personal level, the impact of identitarian messaging is already evidenced in places like South Africa, where in workshops “coming out is promoted as an ideal, a declaration of identity that is seen as an essential rite of passage to becoming a ‘real gay’” (Reid, 167). I do not believe that Happiest Season was made along some larger “agenda,” but in many ways, this is exactly my point. By being blind to the macro white-washed messages it contains, the film has the potential to spread — on a global level — misconstrued notions of what “modern” identity, and furthermore, what the lived experiences of most queer people in the United States, looks like.

Happiest Season aims to universalize a story which is inherently specific and political. In doing so, the filmmakers exclude truly queer voices and fail to challenge the oppressive systems of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and gender inequity that their “groundbreaking” film brings with it. Abby and Harper are allowed to be apolitical about their identities — they have the luxury of casually claiming their gay identities — because they are not concerned with basic subsistence; that luxury is not as transmutable as the movie makes it seem. Happiest Season is a hilarious picture, but as viewers laugh and cry along with the star-studded cast, the seeming insignificance of Abby and Harper’s lesbian love story should not be taken for granted.

¹ Throughout the paper, I will continue to refer to “out” in quotes. Much like referring to a gay “lifestyle,” to “come out” implies the immutable self — a self whose expression neatly mirror its identity — is indisputable.

Works Consulted

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Budhiraja, Sangeeta, Fried, Susana,T. and Teixeira, Alexandra (2010) ‘From alphabet soup to sexual rights and gender justice’ Lind, Amy (ed) Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 131–144.

Erbland, Kate. “‘Happiest Season’: How Clea DuVall Made the Queer Holiday Rom-Com the World Needs Now.” IndieWire, 28 Nov. 2020,https://www.indiewire.com/2020/11/happiest-season-clea-duvall-queer-rom-com-1234599465/.

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Reid, Graeme (2013) How to be a Real Gay. Gay Identities in Small-Town South Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 153–197.

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“Tristar Pictures Acquires Worldwide Rights To Clea Duvall And Mary Holland’s Holiday Romantic Comedy Happiest Season With Temple Hill To Produce.” Sony, 20 April 2018, https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2018/04_18/042018_happiestseason.html.

“TriStar Pictures and Entertainment One’s Romantic Comedy, Happiest Season, Starring Kristen Stewart, to Stream Exclusively on Hulu in the U.S. this Holiday Season.” Sony, 20 October 2020, https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2020/1020.

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