Why I'm Watching Netflix's December Slate With Dancer Eyes
Last December, I spent an entire Saturday wrapped in a blanket, rewatching the final dance scene in The Princess Switch 3 for the fourth time. My roommate thought I'd lost it. But there's something about watching characters move together — really move, not just swaying at a holiday party — that does more for my holiday mood than any amount of Mariah Carey.
So every year around November, I scan Netflix's holiday drop with a specific question: where's the dancing?
What Netflix Actually Dropped This Season
Netflix pushed out roughly 20 holiday originals this year, leaning hard into rom-coms and family animations. Hot Frosty gave us Lacey Chabert opposite a magically animated snowman. The Merry Gentlemen featured Chad Michael Murray in a Christmas-themed male revue — which, yes, technically involves dancing, though not the kind that gets my pulse up in a choreography sense.
Our Little Secret with Lindsay Lohan returned to the classic "forced proximity at a family gathering" formula. Sweet, funny, but zero dance sequences worth pausing to study.
The animated side — That Christmas from Richard Curtis — had its moments, but Pixar-style movement isn't exactly what I mean when I say "dance content."
The Dance Scenes That Actually Hit
Here's the thing. Netflix does have dance in its DNA. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) had a full ensemble number in the village square that I've broken down step-by-step on this site. The choreography blended Afro-Caribbean rhythms with Broadway energy, and it was genuinely unlike anything else in the holiday catalog.
Single All the Way gave us a modest but sweet dance-at-the-party moment. And if you stretch beyond strict holiday content, Netflix's Work It proved there's an appetite for dance-driven storytelling — it pulled 26 million households in its first four weeks.
The gap isn't that Netflix ignores dance. It's that holiday films treat dance as decoration instead of story.
What I Actually Want to See
Give me a holiday film where the central conflict resolves through a dance performance — not a montage set to a pop song, but actual stakes around choreography. A community center about to close. A team of misfits who can barely stay in sync. A final performance that makes the audience in the film (and at home) hold their breath.
Think The Full Monty but make it Christmas. Think Center Stage but set in a small town with fairy lights.
Or — and this is the pitch I'd actually send to Netflix — a docuseries following competitive dancers through the holiday season. The Nutcracker circuit alone is a goldmine of drama: 8-year-olds rehearsing 30 hours a week, college dancers torn between going home and nailing the Snow Queen variation, retired professionals staging productions in community theaters nobody's heard of.
That's the series I'd cancel plans to binge.
Dance Doesn't Need Permission to Be the Main Event
The streaming model rewards content that people finish. Dance-heavy films get rewatched. Dance competition shows generate clips that live on social media for months. Netflix knows this — their acquisition of Dance Monsters and continued investment in reality dance shows proves the algorithm loves movement.
What's missing is someone at the greenlight table saying: "What if the holiday movie is a dance movie?"
Until then, I'll keep fast-forwarding to the two-minute dance scene in whatever rom-com drops next December. And I'll keep hoping that next year, Netflix gives dancers a seat at the holiday table — not just a cameo during the credits.
If you're in the same boat, drop your favorite holiday dance moment in the comments. I need new material for my annual rewatch marathon.
