Chicagoland residents may see some familiar places in recent holiday movies:

If you’re nodding, you’ve seen Very Merry Entertainment’s three holiday films shot on location in the Lake County village: “Christmas with Felicity,” “Reporting for Christmas” and “Christmas on the Ranch.” The latter debuted on Hulu in November.

“Once Upon a Christmas Wish,” a Long Grove production starring Mario Lopez, premieres Saturday on the Great American Family network. And two other Illinois-based movies, “Christmas at the Zoo” and “Christmas in Chicago,” will be released in the future.

In recent years, Illinois has emerged as the site of a holiday movie cottage industry. While old big-screen classics like “Home Alone” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” are associated with the Chicago area, a crop of newer projects were also shot in the city and surrounding villages and suburbs. Of the Christmas movies released between 2018 and 2023, 12 were at least partially filmed in the Chicago area, including the 2021 Disney+ movie “Christmas Again,” according to the Illinois Film Office…

“The villages that surround Chicago are very bucolic, and have this period architecture and a setting that mimics the ideal that the storytelling for a Christmas film encompasses,” said Louis Ferrara, assistant deputy director at the Illinois Film Office. “If you go to Libertyville or Long Grove, you’ll see the Christmas decorations going up [in early November] and through the holidays. So, these villages exist in this manner every year. And I think producers and filmmakers are really now discovering that aspect of our region.”

In other words, the financial situation in the Chicago suburbs has to be good – aka tax breaks – and the communities fit the aesthetic for a Christmas film. If the goal is to have charming downtowns in small suburbs, the Chicago area has plenty of those. Take the Wikipedia description of Long Grove, mentioned above:

The village now has very strict building ordinances to preserve its “pristine rural charm”,^[5] including prohibitions on sidewalks,^[6] fences,^[7] and residential street lights.^[8] The Long Grove area is now known for its historic downtown, its exclusive million dollar homes and the annual events including the chocolate, strawberry and apple festivals that take place in May, June and September, respectively.^[9] The Robert Parker Coffin Bridge, on the edge of the city’s downtown, is a historic 1906 bridge that is featured on the Long Grove’s logo and welcome signs.^[10] Due to the 8-foot-6-inch (2.59 m) clearance height of its covering, it has been struck by vehicles dozens of times in recent years.^[11]

Or Wikipedia’s overview of Libertyville’s downtown:

Libertyville’s downtown area was largely destroyed by fire in 1895,^[11] and the village board mandated brick to be used for reconstruction, resulting in a village center whose architecture is substantially unified by both period and building material.^[11] The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which gave Libertyville a Great American Main Street Award, called the downtown “a place with its own sense of self, where people still stroll the streets on a Saturday night, and where the tailor, the hometown bakery, and the vacuum cleaner repair shop are shoulder to shoulder with gourmet coffee vendors and a microbrewery. If it’s Thursday between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., it’s Farmer’s Market time (June–October) on Church Street across from Cook Park — a tradition for more than three decades.”^[17]

I could imagine some additional Chicagoland suburbs would want to get in on selling themselves as having a charming, Christmas aesthetic that lasts all year long.