Going hand-in-hand with returning home means encountering relatives that drive you up the wall. This is such a standard fixture of the holiday season that holiday romantic comedies regularly feature these characters as an easy way to stir up conflict. Sometimes, these are just supporting players who show up for a brief scene. Other times, they're the crux of the plot, like the assortment of overwhelming relatives that Candace Cameron Bure's protagonist in "Christmas She Wrote" has to deal with after losing her job as a columnist.
This plot thread also serves as a critical ingredient for "My Christmas Family Tree." In that film, intrusive family members help show the discomfort Aimee Teegarden's lead character, Vanessa, feels as she navigates spending the holidays with a family she didn't even know she had before taking a recent DNA test. On and on the list goes, with so many holiday romantic comedies making use of either one or multiple overbearing relatives.
Just as predictable as the presence of overbearing family members can be in the movies, fans can also expect that movies like "Four Christmases" and "Happiest Season" will feature heartfelt climactic reconciliations between the protagonist and their most aggravating relatives. It's the holidays, for goodness sake. Can't we all just get along?
