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.
"On the latest episode of “Everybody on the Internet is Angry,” the Hallmark Channel found itself caught between a Christian rock and an LGBT hard place. After the network ran a commercial from online wedding firm Zola featuring a lesbian wedding, One Million Moms, a division of the American Family Association, “voiced its concern and gave Hallmark the opportunity to do the right thing.”
"Hallmark quickly dropped the ad from its schedule, but after complaints from “prominent LGBT celebrities and advocacy groups” and the rise of #BoycottHallmarkChannel on Twitter, the network reversed its decision, with Hallmark CEO Mike Perry apologizing for the hurt the company had caused and stating, “Hallmark will be working with GLAAD to better represent the LGBT community across our portfolio of brands.”
"To some, it may seem this fiasco could have been avoided if certain Christian Hallmark channel viewers weren’t such sensitive babies. “Is the image of two women getting married so troubling,” some might think, “that you can no longer stand to see if Candace Cameron Bure falls in love with the handsome banker who was sent to town to foreclose on her parents’ cinnamon farm?”
"But easy as it is to cry “baby” and “bigot” at those who don’t want gay weddings lauded during commercial breaks, the truth is, like most bursts of the culture wars, this specific battle wasn’t really about the outward issue. The problem for many Christians is not so much the ad itself but what the ad represents.
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.
"The characters rarely, if ever, pray or worship. The plots never revolve around the heroine saving a church or reading Luke’s nativity account to the flannel-clad, hunky widower’s precocious daughter. The stories never end with the couple kneeling in a sanctuary on Christmas Eve, proclaiming the wonders of the God who took on human flesh to save them from their sins." . . .