Treat Williams Showed All Parents of Gay Children How to Love Their Kids in ‘The Christmas House’

The sudden death of Treat Williams at the age of 71 feels like a major blow. Hollywood has lost one of its sturdiest stars, one of the most reliably engaging character actors of his or any generation. Williams never shied away from a genre or character type. He was most known for stalwartly playing TV dads on Everwood and Chesapeake Shores, but he rose to fame playing a hippie in 1979’s Hair and chewed scenery as the mustachioed B-movie criminal mastermind in 1996’s The Phantom. The tragic event of his passing means we’re going to be reflecting on his incredible body of work, and I think there’s one role that should not be overlooked: his role as patriarch Bill Mitchell in Hallmark’s The Christmas House franchise.

Hallmark holiday movies have only increased in cultural relevance over the years. While Williams’ presence on the network was felt primarily through six seasons of Chesapeake Shores, it has to be pointed out that Williams had a major part to play in the network’s groundbreaking 2020 film The Christmas House. After a holiday season mired in controversy over a commercial featuring a same-sex couple, a controversy that coincidentally coincided with the departure of network head Bill Abbott, The Christmas House ushered in a new era for the network and was part of a watershed holiday season that opened up the tradition of cheesy, family-oriented holiday movies to queer people. And Treat Williams was right there.

The Christmas House became Hallmark’s first holiday movie with a queer couple in the lead. The film, and its 2021 sequel The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls, focuses on the Mitchell family: mother Phyllis (Sharon Lawrence), father Bill (Williams), and sons Mike (Robert Buckley) and Brandon (Jonathan Bennett). In the first film, Brandon and his husband Jake (Brad Harder) anxiously await news regarding an adoption. This may seem as tame as everything else Hallmark airs, but — and the past year of conservative attacks on the LGBTQ+ community should really be a reminder of this — Hallmark airing a same-sex kiss, even one between a married couple who are nervous about starting a family, was a bold statement.

Jonathan Bennett talked to Decider about this moment in 2020: “That scene mattered more than any other scene in my career. When we were done with that scene, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. One of our art department guys who’s gay came up to me and had tears in his eyes. And he said, ‘You know, I do art department for a lot of Hallmark movies, and for the first time, I feel like I’m part of the family now, too.” These movies are silly, right? But this is why they matter.

As the film’s patriarch, Treat Williams brought so much to the role of Bill Mitchell. He played a father figure who loved his sons — straight and gay — and was equally invested in each of their happiness. If that front porch kiss was tame-yet-brave, so was the way Williams played Bill. It cannot be overstated how much gay men needed to see a father like Bill Mitchell, one who did not balk at seeing his son being affectionate with another man, one who treated his son-in-law with respect. This is the basic fundamental respect that families need in order to function, and many gay couples aren’t afforded this in real life.

Just having Treat Williams in the cast added a heightened level of respect to the whole production. Sharon Lawrence, Jonathan Bennett, and Treat Williams — Hallmark was putting real star power behind this statement. Treat Williams is not only a name that everyone from boomers to millennials knows, he’s a performer that everyone wants to watch. You want to see the holiday movie with Treat Williams and Sharon Lawrence as the parents. That mattered.

Having Treat Williams so vocally, so lovingly promote the film on his social media? That mattered too.

My “The Christmas House” son @JonathanBennett and his movie husband Brad Harder on set. Handsome fellows @hallmarkchannel Nov 22 pic.twitter.com/uRtgy2HDBS

— Treat Williams (@Rtreatwilliams) November 11, 2020

That’s the tweet of a father who’s proud of his kids, and who sees his son’s husband as one of his own. And that’s not a tweet from Bill Mitchell; that’s a tweet from Treat Williams.

Somehow the world has only gotten worse for the queer community since The Christmas House’s release in 2020. Last year’s holiday movie season had a cloud over it thanks to narrow-minded comments from one of the season’s biggest names. Hallmark, however, remained steadfast. Jonathan Bennett stepped out of the ensemble and got his own gay holiday rom-com. All of the preposterous controversies around the fact that gay people exist wasn’t reflected in Hallmark’s holiday lineup.

Over the past two years, the Christmas House movies entered the 24/7 rotation of very merry content that Hallmark airs nonstop for three months of the year. The visual of Treat Williams, a bona fide movie star with cross-generational appeal, cutting up with his gay son aired in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The holidays are only getting more stressful for the queer community, but Hallmark holiday movies aren’t supposed to present real life as it is. They’re supposed to present life as we wish it was, and Treat Williams was the father we all wish we had.