Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas schedule is in full swing, with new sprinklings of holiday spirit premiering weekly through the end of the 2025 TV schedule. Lacey Chabert will, of course, be making a showing, starring in She’s Making a List in December. This year, however, she started a little early with another offering, Haul Out the Halloween. I watched the third installment of Chabert’s holiday series, and I was delighted to catch a Mean Girls reference.
Lacey Chabert may be Hallmark’s Christmas queen, but she’ll likely never shake the role of Gretchen Wieners — her iconic character from 2004’s Mean Girls. The teen comedy is considered one of the best movies of the 2000s, and even two decades later, we’re still quoting Mean Girls every chance we get. I even caught what I'm convinced is a reference in Haul Out the Halloween, which premiered last month on the 2025 Christmas movie schedule.
In the Haul Out the Holly three-quel, Lacey Chabert’s Emily is forced to call on news anchor Ashlynn Ashworth (Ashley Whelon), a childhood frenemy (dare I call her a “mean girl”?) to help promote her neighborhood’s Halloween celebration. After Emily ends their conversation with an awkward, “Yeah, girl! Do your thing!,” her husband Jared (Wes Brown) asks, “'Do your thing, girl?' What was that?” Emily replies:
I don’t know! I mean, I get around her and I turn into plastic.
Hold on, did Lacey Chabert just say she turned into plastic? As in Gretchen Wieners, best friend of Regina George, head of The Plastics on Mean Girls? The moment almost got past me, but there are a ton of other phrases Emily could have said in that instance. Alas, she chose to reference the fake friendly quality of the North Shore High mean girl clique.
It’s a subtle reference, I’ll give you that. Definitely not as on the nose as when Jonathan Bennett — aka Mean Girls’ Aaron Samuels — quoted Gretchen in his Hallmark Christmas movie The Holiday Sitter. When his character woke up to his neighbor’s dog licking his face, he groggily told the beast:
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
Props for using the actual meaning of the word “fetch.”
This wasn’t the first time Lacey Chabert referenced the beloved 2004 film (which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription). In fact, when she was promoting Haul Out the Holly back in 2022, she referenced a famous exchange between Rachel McAdams’ Regina and Amanda Seyfried’s Karen.
It’s not just Hallmark movies that have contained Mean Girls easter eggs either. Lindsay Lohan included “Jingle Bell Rock” in her Netflix holiday movie Falling for Christmas a couple of years ago, as did Lacey Chabert on her own Netflix movie, last year’s Hot Frosty. That 2024 option included another fun reference, as her character seemed to recognize Lohan from somewhere …
Will Lacey Chabert be dropping any more Mean Girls easter eggs this holiday season? Tune into She’s Making a List at 8 p.m. ET Saturday, December 6, on Hallmark to find out. In the meantime, Haul Out the Holly will air next on the network at 6 p.m. ET November 21, and its sequel Haul Out the Holly: Lit Up at 4 a.m. ET November 22, if you want to relive all of the Evergreen Lane fun.
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