Lifetime TV Decides To Acknowledge Christmastime … By Dishonoring The One Who Is The Reason For Christmas
The popular cable channel has jumped on the holiday movie bandwagon, with a dozen premiering flicks in the chute this time around.
When Sammy Davis, Jr. crooned about “Christmas Time All Over the World” decades ago, he was merely melodiously confirming what’s been true for quite a while: There are sleigh-loads of Christmas traditions observed nearly everywhere around the planet. For that matter — and shrinking things down a bit — varieties of holiday celebrations abound across America; from state to state and family to family as well.
Then there’s the Lifetime TV Network’s approach. This Fox News headline spells out the basics: “Lifetime teases first Christmas movie ‘sex scene’ in network’s history: ‘Came out so beautifully’ “.
Apparently, the popular cable channel has jumped on the holiday movie bandwagon, with a dozen premiering flicks in the chute this time around. Gabriel Hays reports among them is A Cowboy Christmas … unique in at least one salaciously significant respect.
The new film stars actor Adam Senn and actress Jana Kramer, who plays a real estate agent that has to return to her hometown in Arizona and reclaim land from a local rancher. In the process, she reconnects with her family and falls in love. The actress recently spoke about the “‘first’ Lifetime Christmas sex scene … saying … “[H]e lays me down on some hay, and then we, you know. Obviously, it’s still Lifetime, it’s still family. But it was pushing limits there, too… They didn’t cut anything. I was so happy that they really left it all in there.”
(A brief aside: Lifetime is a “family”-friendly operation? When did I miss that development? Anyway …)
So, according to Ms. Kramer, what deserves ballyhooing during 2023’s December stretch is … challenging traditional “limits”? During the “most wonderful time of the year” — an annual period that, as few others, practically defines “tradition” — a cherished goal ought to be to breach tradition?
It all came out so beautifully, but especially the scene in the kitchen. I had written into the stage directions, “He pulls her up onto the counter, he shoves things off the table.”
added the adult-oriented scene to the film, because they wanted to heat up their usual holiday fare. … “We think that there’s an audience out there that’s hungry for grown-up romance, and we’re looking forward to adding some smolder to the usual holiday sugar and spice.
Must terms like “adult-oriented” and “grown-up” reflexively translate nowadays to sleazy? Sex-obsession, anyone? It all sounds anything but “grown-up” to me — typically more the fixation of fuzzy-faced teen-age boys. Are these artistes so shallow and pubescent that they can’t plumb mature themes without stooping to the fornication factor?
Mind you, the habit of greeting the arrival of the Baby Jesus by indulging in behavior that doesn’t exactly jibe with His God-honoring standards isn’t an altogether unknown phenomenon. Drunken Christmas hootenannies? A pell-mell money-spending frenzy between Black Friday and December 24th? A garlanded season choked with grasping, gaudy materialism? Each of these practices lays claim to a long, dishonorable history. That aside, I’m gonna guess that miraculous scene in the Bethlehem manger wasn’t arranged so people would conduct themselves in such a manner.
Christ is born, glorify Him. … This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man … that putting off of the old man, we might put on the new;… Therefore, let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him who is ours
Considering the entertainment industry’s polluted holiday offerings, it would appear they didn’t get Gregory’s memo. Too often they borrow the “C” from the Big Day’s title and repurpose it to spell out “Crass” or “Crude”. Or “Canoodle”? Films like 2003’s overrated Love Actually, vile Bad Santa and Vince Vaughan’s egregious Four Christmases (2008) for instance. True enough, these plots unfold against the backdrop of December 25th but, in assorted ways, they stomp all over so much of what the Focus of that holiday came to teach us.
How about the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers number “A Christmas to Remember” (1984)? Exactly what is the duo remembering? An unexpected encounter, turns out, at a favorite ski resort where the subjects of the tune (“Strangers when we met”) proceed to enjoy a week of illicit intimacy (“lovers when we leave”):
You’ve made this a Christmas to remember/Springtime feeling’s in the middle of December/Strangers meet and willingly surrender…/ With a fast talking lover and some slow burning wood…/Though it’s cold outside we’ll just stroke the burning embers/Oh! What a Christmas to remember
Gives new meaning to ringing in the holidays, I suppose — though those sentiments aren’t terribly consonant with the One we sing about on Christmas Day. He stressed sexual purity, recall; within the framework of marriage. Never a ski chalet holiday hook-up.
It would seem to some of these musicians and Tinsel Town-types observing the season designed to commemorate the Savior’s birth involves defecating on key virtues He came to promote. He appeared to rescue us from guilt and sin. They opt to wallow, instead, in the same while tipping their hats to the holiday that presents the solution.
“How many observe Christ’s birthday!”, exclaimed Ben Franklin. “How few, his precepts! O! ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.”
Dennis Prager repeatedly — properly — accuses Leftism of ruining everything it touches. I’d boil down that observation even further to charge Secularism and Libertinism with the same effect. Both of them, after all, are philosophical offshoots of Leftism.
Which carries us back to the Lifetime TV Network and its A Cowboy Christmas. Plainly, nothing is sacred to the modern, sensual, entertain me!, I-want-it-and-I-want-it-
To be clear: Sex between human beings was originally God’s incandescent idea — the same God who sent His Son as a tiny human being on that glorious morning we salute each wintertime. He fashioned sex to be fun, to knit husband and wife into one flesh, to serve as an aspect of married life and, in the process, sometimes produce new life.
That aside, sex is not worthy of providing the central, organizing principle of one’s existence. Our contemporary, pornified culture would aggressively differ with that conclusion — as Lifetime’s holiday outrage lately attests. That culture would be wrong.
Additionally, sex is not worthy of befouling what ought to be a pure, radiant Christmas celebration; nor of dishonoring the One that celebration is supposed to exalt.
