Under God Where’s the ‘Christian’ in Hallmark Christmas Movies?

 The American Spectator 

"Christian movies should be distinct not because the main characters don’t have sex before marriage or because they read the Bible. Rather, Christian movies should imbue the viewer with a sense of sacramentality, of the transcendent being present in the small concrete details of the production, writing, set design, and interactions between characters." 

 

Wait! You forgot the one adorable child in town!

 "As expected, conservative Christians are up in arms over yet another gay Hallmark Christmas film.  And as expected, pro-LGBT people and their allies are up in arms over conservative Christians being up in arms over it. Talk about algorithms subsuming the human psyche!

"Many Christians were outraged with Hallmark for giving into “secular culture” upon the release of its first gay Christmas movie, The Christmas House, in 2020. For them, the Hallmark channel was one of the last vestiges of “Christian values.” And what values are those, exactly? Contrived, recycled plotlines? Mediocre writing? D-list acting? No offense to devout Christian actors like Lacey Chabert and Candace Cameron Bure, but the only thing remotely Christian about these films are the fact that they don’t blatantly transgress Christian moral sensibilities.

"As Hans Fiene points out, 

In a theological sense, the Hallmark Channel is not a Christian broadcasting network. More to the point, the 6,000 original “Christmas” movies the network airs every December are not genuinely Christian films in content … But, culturally speaking, Hallmark Christmas movies are noticeably Christian. The characters don’t take off their clothes, murder anyone, or use profanity. The hero loves children and defends the poor. The heroine who begins the story loving her self-involved life in the city chooses family and a life of self-sacrifice in her hometown by the end of the tale.

"If you’re a pious Christian mom who wants to escape into a universe where all the cynicism and immorality of modern life aren’t allowed, or if you want to snuggle up with your eight-year-old daughter and watch a silly movie without having to explain inappropriate content you weren’t expecting, the Hallmark Channel is about the only place left that will let you do it.

"Fiene also notes that there’s rarely ever explicit references to religion in the movies (church, Scripture, prayer, etc), unlike the films featured on Pure Flix

"This implies that Christianity is merely about moral rules and rituals. Christianity does have this in common with other religions, but what makes it most distinct from other religions is the belief in an incarnate Deity. God enters the flesh through Jesus. The encounter with him ontologically changes our consciousness of ourselves and of the concrete, carnal details of the world around us." . . .

Australia has long tolerated the proponents of such mayhem and silenced those who raise the alarm.

Douglas Murray 

 "The problem has been in plain sight all along. It’s shameful that so many people in positions of power decided to metaphorically shoot the messengers, while all the time clearing a path for the real-life shooters to take aim, and fire."

"Do words have any meaning? Most people think so, which is why there is an endless debate about which words should be permitted by law, which should be a matter for the law, and which words should be debated in the realm of manners.

"Where does “Gas the Jews” fit into that? There are contexts where those words could be in the realm of manners. For instance, somebody might use them in a comedy club, doing a routine about forbidden statements. But how about using them immediately after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? How about if the words are used on the streets by a mob—not in a spirit of jest, but of intent?

"Do words have any meaning? Most people think so, which is why there is an endless debate about which words should be permitted by law, which should be a matter for the law, and which words should be debated in the realm of manners.

"Where does “Gas the Jews” fit into that? There are contexts where those words could be in the realm of manners. For instance, somebody might use them in a comedy club, doing a routine about forbidden statements. But how about using them immediately after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? How about if the words are used on the streets by a mob—not in a spirit of jest, but of intent?" . . .

But the main question is why the Australian authorities did not take the concerns of Jewish Australians seriously, and why indeed they spent the last two years pandering to the ever-growing contingent of Muslim immigrants and others who have clearly been on the path to radicalization. It will not be enough for them to say that they did not know.

More...

Douglas Murray is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the bestselling author of seven books, including On Democracies and Death Cults (2025) and The War on the West (2022).

The Dave Barry 2025 Holiday Gift Guide

 Dave Barry... 2025...Gift Guide  

. . . "Do you have somebody on your holiday gift list who enjoys reading intellectually sophisticated, thought-provoking literature? This is not the gift for that person. This is for the person who would be amused by a can labeled FISH BALLS." . . .

   "Today we officially enter the holiday season, a very special time of year when we pause amid the frantic hustle and bustle of the “daily grind” to incur large amounts of consumer debt because we have to buy gifts for our loved ones to reciprocate for the gifts that they have to buy for us to reciprocate for the gifts that we are buying for them.

   "This is a tradition that dates back more than 2,000 years, to the time when the Three Wise Men traveled to an inn in Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus, who was staying with Mary and Joseph in the stable because Housekeeping was still working on their room. The New Testament tells us that Mary placed Jesus in a “manger,” which I always thought was just another word for “stable,” but I recently looked it up and it’s actually a feeding trough for livestock, which means — the New Testament does not state this explicitly, but it’s clearly implied — that the baby Jesus could have been accidentally eaten by a cow. So it had to have been an anxious time for Mary, a new mom exhausted from childbirth, having to fend off livestock, not to mention the annoying little boy who, according to the popular 347-minute Christmas song, showed up wanting to serenade her newborn infant by pounding on a drum." . . .

   "Thousands of years later, we’re still dealing with the stress of holiday gift-giving — the constant nagging worry that we won’t have enough gifts to retaliate against everybody who will be giving gifts to us. Wouldn’t it be great if you could drop out of this insane holiday competition? Well you can! The trick is to stop trying to give your loved ones thoughtful and appropriate gifts. Instead, you want to give them gifts that are so stupid or inappropriate that they will never want to exchange gifts with you again, and in fact may enter the Federal Witness Protection Program to avoid running that risk.

..."Where can you find gifts that bad? Right here, that’s where, in my annual Holiday Gift Guide. This is a carefully curated selection of real products that you can actually buy; in fact these products are all 100 percent tax-deductible if you write about them for business purposes in your professional humor Substack. So grab your credit card and prepare to be underwhelmed, because here comes this year’s lineup of gift candidates, starting with:"

But wait! There's More!

A murder spree from hell

 Power Line Blog

"[DHS Secretary Kristi Noem] relates that she has been instructed by the president to suspend the program. Noem’s is a voice of sanity in this enraging case with more to come." 

"The man suspected of carrying out two murderous attacks — one at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine more, and another that killed the MIT professor in his Brookline home — was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire last night. The murderer apparently took the coward’s way out.

"Listening to the Providence press conference last night — it was followed by one featuring United States Attorney Leah Foley speaking about the murder of MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro — we learned that a witness who had confronted the murderer on the Brown campus provided the key to the breaking of the case by law enforcement. His information “blew this case right open,” according to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha at the news conference. The witness is only identified as “John” in a police affidavit. We need to hear more about that man while we mourn the dead. What a tragic loss. Our condolences go out to the families of all the victims.

"Claudio Manuel Neves Valente has now been identified as the murderer. He attended the same academic program in Portugal as Professor Loureiro from 1995-2000 and also attended Brown in the 2000-2001 school year. Just about all the rest that we want to know remains shrouded in mystery at this time.

"Under other circumstances, the press conference with the Rhode Island authorities last night — the mayor, the police chief, the Rhode Island governor and attorney general, the president of Brown — might have been played for comedy. The politicians celebrated Providence and Rhode Island. Long on happy talk and self-congratulation, they seemed to me short on the facts of the case. Like comic buffoons, they are full of themselves. Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks provided a striking contrast." . . .

Disturbing noises Brown University shooter made as he gunned down students

Did Brown University shooter yell "allahu akbar" before firing? What we know  - Newsweek  "Authorities are continuing to search for the gunman who killed two students at Brown University in Rhode Island, amid speculation over whether he shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he carried out his shooting spree. 

"The claim that the Arabic cry of "God is great" accompanied the shooting was posted on X by far-right political activist Laura Loomer.

"There is no independent confirmation of this claim, which has gained traction on social media—as have other theories about the perpetrator— including that he was a disgruntled leftist." ...

"Law enforcement have not revealed any motive behind the shooting and there is no confirmation that these words were uttered nor is there any evidence that the media was suppressing any information about the alleged refrain.

"Loomer’s post said a source had told her about the shooter’s words, without providing further proof, but it sparked a lively thread asking where the claim had come from.

" 'Laura Loomer spreading unverified 'Allahu Akbar’ rumors about Brown shooting with zero evidence from credible sources, classic fearmongering grift,” wrote Richard Angwin. 

“Is there a reliable source what was yelled? Post the witness saying it,” wrote the X account Moni, while another account said: “What is your source? It's all just speculation now.” 

"Conservative influencers weighed in with their theories. Shaun Maguire, a partner at the firm Sequoia Capital wrote: “To the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and now to the tragic murder of Ella Cook, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’re not getting the truth fast enough from law enforcement and our media.”  . . .

We must be better than MSNOW!

 Man suspected in Brown University shooting and MIT professor’s killing is found dead, officials say

"Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two students and wounding nine other people in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday, then killing MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days later at his home in the Boston suburbs, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Providence. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone." . . .

Walz's Minnesota was such a big playground for fraud it drew 'fraud tourism'

Monica Showalter 

"To really make a state "third world" what's needed is a Democrat or a third-world satrap on the other end, dispensing the cash."

"How bad was Minnesota's problem with fraudulently dispensed state funds?

"It was so bad it drew "fraud tourists," according to a CBS News report — eighteen billion dollars' worth.

Federal prosecutors announced new indictments Thursday in the widening Minnesota fraud scandal, this time involving two Philadelphia-based men accused of traveling to Minneapolis after a friend told them the taxpayer-funded programs there presented "a good opportunity to make money."

Anthony Waddel Jefferson and Lester Brown are accused of siphoning millions from federally funded programs administered by Minnesota officials that were meant to help people with disabilities and those suffering from addiction.

Unlike many of the individuals previously caught up in the state's sprawling fraud scandal, they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota's large Somali-American community. Prosecutors say they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota at all.

"Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry — people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who brought the new charges. "This is a deeply unsettling reality that all Minnesotans should understand."

"They defrauded Medicaid, others in this batch of busts defrauded a housing stabilization service for the homeless, still others defrauded child autism programs. They all found Minnesota a tourist's paradise, not for its lakes and scenery, but for every kind of fraud. That's because every agency on Gov. Tim Walz's watch apparently never said 'no' to anyone. Word got around about 'a good opportunity to make money' as one of the accused fraudsters put it, the cash went out like water through a sieve and now the busts are rolling in." . . .Full article....

Rob Reiner took the high road on Charlie Kirk, but James Carville goes for the gutter

 Olivia Murray 

 "Carville doesn’t want to give the right any more ammo, but then tells conservatives and Republicans our martyred hero isn’t even a pimple on an ass, handing us a MOAB of insanity and malice."

"In the wake of Rob Reiner’s brutal murder, allegedly at the hands of his own son, AT’s own J.R. Dunn penned an essay about how Reiner had actually expressed genuine empathy and humanity for Charlie Kirk after Kirk’s own killing. This was news to me, and honestly, quite a surprise—all I knew of Reiner and his politics were his unhinged and maniacal rants against President Trump and conservatives. What I saw was a fat, sputtering, vile old man, who clearly wasn’t a thinking or moral guy—but as Dunn revealed, he did actually have a heart.

"So, despite a history of TDS and conservative hate, Reiner chose compassion and sympathy when one of our own was targeted and gruesomely killed over personal beliefs and convictions.

"James Carville did the exact opposite—while Reiner took the high road, Carville went straight for the gutter. According to a new article at Breitbart, Carville recently denigrated Kirk as not even being a “pimple” on Reiner’s “a**”:" . . .  More...

Virtue Signaling Isn't Virtuous

Why the Left Will Never Stop Virtue Signaling

"As I said in my previous article, these virtue signals are a deadly game to play, and it's made more disgusting by the fact that the first people usually victimized by virtue signaling are the innocent. Namely, the poor, whom the left claims to champion but never actually does. "

This should pretty much cover it all

. . . "As I highlight in that quote, the backbone of virtue signaling is peer recognition. 

"Virtue signaling serves a lot of purposes. Seducing the ignorant is, of course, a large part of that. Making someone who doesn't know any better believe you have a moral high ground that you actually don't can make them put a bit of trust in you that you don't actually deserve. Pretending to be virtuous by using nebulous phrases and buzzwords is a time-honored tradition of the left, and too often the right. 

"But for the left, virtue signaling is a baked-in part of the culture. You must express virtues to be accepted. Failure to do so could result in you being sidelined at best, made an enemy at worst. It doesn't matter if you actually believe these things or not; you just have to be willing to profess them. A solid example of this in recent history is the left's profession that women's rights are holy, but this goes out the window the moment a man in a dress and makeup shows up. 

"You can see these examples in almost every facet of society and nearly every subculture." . . . 

—and Actually Makes Political Tribalism Worse

"But useful though it may be, virtue signaling is far less demanding, and far less constructive, than virtue itself. Unless the former is matched with the latter – that is, unless words are matched with actions – mere signaling is insufficient."

War On Jihad: The Channukah Massacre Was Inevitable

 Douglas Murray 

  "Does anyone think that if there had been anti-Muslim or anti-Arab demonstrations on the streets every week for the two years following the 2019 attack—expressly celebrating the attack and calling for it to happen again—that the Australian authorities would have stood by, or actually placated the mob? To ask the question is to answer it."

One more Jew...

"Do words have any meaning? Most people think so, which is why there is an endless debate about which words should be permitted by law, which should be a matter for the law, and which words should be debated in the realm of manners.

"Where does “Gas the Jews” fit into that? There are contexts where those words could be in the realm of manners. For instance, somebody might use them in a comedy club, doing a routine about forbidden statements. But how about using them immediately after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? How about if the words are used on the streets by a mob—not in a spirit of jest, but of intent?

"That’s what happened outside the Sydney opera house on October 9, 2023—two days after Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people, and took another 250 hostage. The people in the mob outside the opera house that night were not objecting to the war that resulted from that massacre. They were not trying out some new comedy material. They were using the massacre of Jews as the impetus to stand in their own city, oceans away, and advocate for the gassing of Jews.

"Of course, the Australian authorities did not take any meaningful action regarding that protest. No more than they chose to take action against the numberless protests in major Australian cities since October 2023 in which protesters have chanted “Globalize the Intifada” and much more.

"Which is not to say that the Australian government are free-speech absolutists. They are not. Nor does Australia have an equivalent of the First Amendment which strictly protects Free Speech, even up to the point of incitement. On the contrary, the Australian authorities are among the toughest in the world when it comes to policing speech.

"Just this past June, Australia barred an Israeli called Hillel Fuld from coming into the country. Fuld is a pro-Israel activist whose brother Ari Fuld was stabbed to death by a jihadist terrorist in 2018. Ari Fuld was a hero in his life and in his final moments when, taking on the terrorist, he saved many more lives. But the Australian authorities were persuaded that the brother of the slain Ari could cause a risk to “health, safety or good order” in Australia. And so, he was barred from entry.

"It is worth digesting that for a moment. A man whose brother was killed by a terrorist should not enter Australia because he could potentially alert people to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Which could in itself cause public disorder." . . .  Full article here...

Soros-Backed DA Drops Charges on Alleged Attempted Killer—He 'Finishes the Job' 24 Hours Later

 Twitchy 

Illegal immigrant was released from jail by Soros district attorney one day before allegedly killing Virginia man

"An illegal immigrant in Virginia has been arrested on charges of homicide just a day after he was let out of jail on a separate offense by a progressive district attorney whose campaign was funded by George Soros.

Steve Descano, prosecutor for Fairfax County, Virginia, dropped all charges against a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador with a criminal history, allowing the suspect to go free into the community, only to be picked up by police on a suspected murder charge a day later, local media outlet WJLA reported.

The Fairfax County Police Department announced Wednesday afternoon that officers had arrested Marvin Morales-Ortez as the suspect in a fatal shooting that occurred outside a home in Reston earlier in the day.

Morales-Ortez had a long list of felony arrests in the county, but was released from jail on Tuesday after Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office dropped the charges for brandishing a firearm and assaulting and injuring someone.

Descano's campaign for his current job, the top law enforcement official in a Virginia county outside Washington, was bankrolled in 2019 by the Justice and Public Safety PAC, whose sole funder is George Soros.

Soros is a billionaire who has made a name for himself by financing campaigns for progressive candidates in the United States and globally.

Fellows at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington wrote in 2020 that to gain the financial backing of Soros, "rogue prosecutors such as Descano kowtow to the movement because it bankrolls their campaigns. ... Once elected, they’re expected to deliver on their promises."

VDH: ‘You Don’t Criticize People in Oedipean Fashion That Are Killed by Their Sons’

Victor Davis Hanson

"In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss the tragic murder of director-activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, and the unfortunate reaction by President Donald Trump to the slaying."

. . . "So, when the Truth Social posting from Trump comes out, and he says he died because of Trump Derangement Syndrome or the anger, I don’t know if he’s referring to he thinks the son was angry at his father’s politics. I doubt that seriously. I don’t know where any people in Brentwood who are pro-Trump, people of any mental state." 

"But the point is this: I think that’s what you were hinting on is you can’t get angry. I can get angry. You can get angry. We’re angry at all those people like [Reps.] Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, who said terrible things about Charlie Kirk after he was dead. But you have no moral credibility if you condemn that and you don’t condemn what Trump said.". . .

Viral Target Meltdown Update: Elderly Woman Berated Over Charlie Kirk Tee Speaks Out, Unhinged Nurse Begs Forgiveness as Hospital Pleads ‘Stop Flooding Our Lines!’

The Gateway Pundit  

This woman on TikTok filmed herself harassing and cussing out an older lady at work for wearing a Charlie Kirk shirt
cc @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/4OwOuHzxmH

— Cassandra MacDonald (@CassandraRules) December 16, 2025

"Jeanie Beeman, the 72-year-old Target employee who was berated for wearing a Charlie Kirk “Freedom” shirt in the now-viral video, has come forward to speak to the media, and Enloe Health, Michelea Ponce’s employer, has held a press conference asking people to stop calling and demanding her termination.

"Ponce herself has also released a statement, which is not written in the way she herself speaks, begging for forgiveness after the Chico Police announced that they have dropped their investigation into the incident.

"Additionally, the GiveSendGo fundraiser launched by this reporter to send Beeman on vacation has now raised over $215,000.

"The incident, which occurred in a Target store in Chico, California, was uploaded to TikTok by Ponce herself. However, she shut down all of her social media accounts shortly after The Gateway Pundit caught it and covered it on Monday."   Much more here