Hallmark holiday movie fans are flocking to Connecticut's quaint filming
locations
[December 15, 2025]
By SUSAN HAIGH
WETHERSFIELD, Conn. (AP) — “Christmas at Pemberly Manor” and “Romance at
Reindeer Lodge” may never make it to Oscar night, but legions of fans
still love these sweet-yet-predictable holiday movies — and this season,
many are making pilgrimages to where their favorite scenes were filmed.
That's because Connecticut — the location for at least 22 holiday films
by Hallmark, Lifetime and others — is promoting tours of the quaint
Christmas-card cities and towns featured in this booming movie market;
places where a busy corporate lawyer can return home for the holidays
and cross paths with a plaid shirt-clad former high school flame who now
runs a Christmas tree farm. (Spoiler alert: they live happily ever
after.)
“It’s exciting — just to know that something was in a movie and we
actually get to see it visually,” said Abby Rumfelt of Morganton, North
Carolina, after stepping off a coach bus in Wethersfield, Connecticut,
at one of the stops on the holiday movie tour.
Rumfelt was among 53 people, mostly women, on a recent weeklong
"Hallmark Movie Christmas Tour," organized by Mayfield Tours from
Spartanburg, South Carolina. On the bus, fans watched the matching
movies as they rode from stop to stop.
To plan the tour, co-owner Debbie Mayfield used the “ Connecticut
Christmas Movie Trail ” map, which was launched by the wintry New
England state last year to cash in on the growing Christmas-movie craze.
Mayfield, who co-owns the company with her husband, Ken, said this was
their first Christmas tour to holiday movie locations in Connecticut and
other Northeastern states. It included hotel accommodations, some meals,
tickets and even a stop to see the Rockettes in New York City. It sold
out in two weeks.
With snow flurries in the air and Christmas songs piped from a speaker,
the group stopped for lunch at Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre, where
parts of the Hallmark films “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 1700s and 1800s buildings. It's
an ideal setting for a holiday movie. Even the local country store has
sold T-shirts featuring Hallmark’s crown logo and the phrase “I Live in
a Christmas Movie. Wethersfield, CT 06109."
“People just know about us now,” said Julia Koulouris, who co-owns the
market with her husband, Spiros, crediting the movie trail in part. “And
you see these things on Instagram and stuff where people are tagging it
and posting it.”
Christmas movies are big business — and a big deal to fans
The concept of holiday movies dates back to 1940s, when Hollywood
produced classics like “It's A Wonderful Life," “Miracle on 34th Street”
and “Christmas in Connecticut,” which was actually shot at the Warner
Bros. studios in Burbank, California.
In 2006, five years after the launch of the Hallmark Channel on TV,
Hallmark “struck gold” with the romance movie “The Christmas card,” said
Joanna Wilson, author of the book “Tis the Season TV: The Encyclopedia
of Christmas-Themed Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies.”
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Christina and Raul Nieves of Windsor Locks ride the Bushnell Park
Carousel in Hartford, Conn., Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. Scenes from the
Hallmark movie "Ghost of Christmas Always" were filmed at the
carousel. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
 “Hallmark saw those high ratings and
then started creating that format and that formula with the tropes
and it now 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 mix of cable and broadcast networks, streaming
platforms, and direct-to-video producers release roughly 100 new
films annually, Wilson said. The genre has also diversified, with
characters from a wider range of racial and ethnic backgrounds as
well as LGBTQ+ storylines.
The formula, however, remains the same. And fans still have an
appetite for a G-rated love story.
“They want to see people coming together. They want to see these
romances. It’s a 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 of 65 years, Owen, like to watch the movies together
year-round because they're sweet and family-friendly. They also take
her back to their early years as a young couple, when life felt
simpler.
“We hold hands sometimes,” she said. “It's kind of sweet. We've got
two recliners back in a bedroom that's real small and we've got the
TV there. And we close the doors off and it's just our time together
in the evening.”
Falling in love again... with a state
Connecticut's chief marketing officer, Anthony M. Anthony, said the
Christmas Movie Trail is part of a multipronged rebranding effort
launched in 2023 that promotes the state not just as a tourist
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 them being sets of movies?” he said.
However, there continues to be debate at the state Capitol over
whether to eliminate or cap film industry tax credits — which could
threaten how many more of these movies will be made locally.
Christina Nieves and her husband of 30 years, Raul, already live in
Connecticut and have been tackling the trail “little by little."
It's been a chance, she said, to explore new places in the state,
like the Bushnell Park Carousel in Hartford, where a scene from
“Ghost of Christmas Always” was filmed.
It also inspired Nieves to convince her husband — not quite the
movie fan she is — to join her at a tree-lighting and Christmas
parade in their hometown of Windsor Locks.
“I said, listen, let me just milk this Hallmark thing as long as I
can, OK?” she said.
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