“The More the Merrier”: Plot Summary of Hallmark’s First Polyamory Christmas Movie
By: Jennie Young
Tags: Humor, Relationships, Sex, Holidays, Satire

Kaylee Carmichael, a 28-year-old single food critic for a New York City newspaper, goes back to her tiny Wisconsin hometown for Christmas. Unbeknownst to Kaylee, her mother has already engaged in some holiday hijinks by arranging for Kaylee’s high school sweetheart to retrieve her from the train station and deliver her to the family cheese factory. By the end of the drive, which takes seven minutes, Kaylee is in love. Brandon has grown into the perfect male adult: — sweet, wholesome, hardworking, and, as per usual, widowed. He is also polyamorous.

Kaylee doesn’t know what this means but glosses over it in the midst of all the Christmas frivolity. She absent-mindedly interprets the combined syllables of “polyamory” to mean something akin to “lots of love,” and who doesn’t want lots of love, especially at Christmas?!

There is some Hallmark-level comedic irony achieved when Kaylee innocently remarks to her mother how many nice female friends Brandon has, but when he dances with them at the Christmas dance she gets a little jealous and confronts him. Brandon tells her that while he is completely committed to Kaylee and to their sex life comprised solely of closed-mouth kisses, he also wants the freedom to closed-mouth kiss other women whom he also loves.

Kaylee bursts into tears and calls Brandon a “jerk!” and runs out of the town hall, but he chases after her and insists that it’s not like that — polyamory isn’t “cheating,” it’s an intentional engagement in non-monogamous intimate relationships negotiated through informed consent of all parties.

These words confuse Kaylee, but then Brandon explains to her that hoarding the magic of Christmas romance between just two people is not only selfish, but anti-Christian. Kaylee remains a bit skeptical, but as she glances around at the visitors now streaming out of the dance and sees wholesome looking gay men and light-skinned black women, she thinks to herself, “The world is changing. Maybe I should change too.”

Her most immediate concern is how to tell her doting-but-somewhat-toxically-masculine father about her new relationship. When she tells Brandon how scared she is about breaking the news to her dad, he says, “Why tell him? Let’s SHOW him!” Kaylee gasps, but Brandon quickly says, “No! Not like that!” What Brandon does next demonstrates to Kaylee and all the townspeople how beautiful polyamory can be when experienced through the redeeming magic of Christmas.

The remaining part of “The More the Merrier” features scenes from the Polyamory Christmas Festival that Brandon organizes: a gingerbread competition in which every house has a tiny apartment above the garage; a snowfamily building competition in which each entry features three or more adult snowpeople; a re-imagined pairs-figure-skating competition in which the skaters can be any number or combination of people whose implied sexual connection is apparent to the audience.

Overall, the festival is a raging success, with the exception of the sit-on-Santa’s-lap booth, where things get a little weird. Kaylee’s dad effectively shuts that down with little fanfare, and Kaylee, her parents, Brandon, Brandon’s motherless child, and Brandon’s new girlfriend Hayley cap off the day with a big Christmas dinner and an only-slightly-awkward discussion of the Christmas Eve sleeping arrangements.