REKINDLING CHRISTMAS

Name: REKINDLING CHRISTMAS
Item: REKINDLING CHRISTMAS
Author: Tess Farrand

"Family Values Undermined by Occult Content"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

REKINDLING CHRISTMAS is a movie available on Video on Demand. Former NFL hotshot Jesse Winchester didn’t think he’d come back to his hometown of Bryan, Texas after a booming athletic career. However, when an injury forces him to leave football, he has his new season of life in Texas. As Jesse adjusts to life outside of the limelight, he encounters his college sweetheart, Annika, and starts to pursue a relationship with her again. Will her hurt from him leaving her to pursue his football career keep them from moving forward? Meanwhile, Jesse also meets a little girl who appears to be a guardian angel to Annika and her son, TJ.

REKINDLING CHRISTMAS functions like a standard sweet, but predictable Christmas movie and doesn’t apologize for doing so. The movie tries to mirror the whimsy of the Christmas season with strong morality involving family values and love. However, it has a strong Romantic, occult worldview with bad theology where a guardian angel is revealed to be the ghost of a dead girl. Media-wise viewers will find the occult content in REKINDLING CHRISTMAS unacceptable.

Content:

(RoRo, C, OO, FRFR, Pa, L, V, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong Romantic, occult worldview that tries to mirror the whimsy of the Christmas season but a “guardian angel” that one person talks to who gives him advice turns out to be the ghost of a dead girl worldview, some moral elements extol marriage, family and reconciliation, and a New Age comment where a character references the “powers that be” rather than Almighty God

Foul Language:

No obscenities but two light profanities, and a man accidentally walks into a ladies restroom and sees some feminine products

Violence:

Mention of a child dying in a car accident, and a mother and a son get in one themselves, but they end up being okay, and no blood is shown

Sex:

No sex scenes, but man and girlfriend hug, and she wraps her legs around him as they kiss

Nudity:

No nudity

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Some sarcasm and mention of a divorce.

More Detail:

REKINDLING CHRISTMAS is a movie available on Video on Demand. The movie follows a retired NFL hotshot, who comes to his Texas hometown and hopes to rekindle a romance with his college sweetheart, who’s still upset he left her to become a big time football player. REKINDLING CHRISMAS tries to mirror the whimsy of the Christmas season with some positive moral elements stressing family values and love, but it has a strong Romantic, occult worldview with bad theology where a guardian angel is revealed to be the ghost of a dead girl.

Former NFL hotshot Jesse Winchester didn’t think he’d come back to his hometown of Bryan, Texas after a booming athletic career. However, when an injury forces him to leave football, he enters into his new season of life. His assistant, Carrie, is a source of encouragement. She helps him get his act together by taking a job at the local school and urging him to speak about his experiences as a professional athlete.

One day at a restaurant, Jesse runs into his college sweetheart, Annika, who’s now a published author, divorced mother and English teacher at the same school he now works. Jesse slowly starts to rekindle a romance with Annika, but she’s still hurt that Jesse literally went off to the big leagues and never looked back. However, Jesse continues to assert that he did in fact look back, and he’s never stopped loving her since college.

Annika’s son, TJ, is a spitfire and equal parts a doting son and a truth-teller. TJ enjoys how Jesse makes his mother feel and how he isn’t afraid to pursue her romantically, even when she’s difficult for no apparent reason.

Things come to a head when Jesse learns that the little girl, Lizzy, he’s been talking to is actually Annika’s deceased late daughter. Jesse tries to tell Annika this, but she thinks Jesse is playing some cruel joke on her, and she shuts him out before they can continue to rekindle their romance. With TJ’s help, Jesse convinces Annika that Lizzy may be a sort of guardian angel for their family, but will that be enough for Annika to stay in Jesse’s life?

REKINDLING CHRISTMAS functions like a standard sweet, but predictable Christmas movie and doesn’t apologize for doing so. Although the script is full of sweet tender moments, the structure could’ve used some TLC. Annika and Jesse begin to have “define the relationship” conversations about 40 minutes into the story, instead of building anticipation towards the later half of the movie. It seems that filmmakers do this on purpose to allow viewers to watch their romance play out, but in doing so, it makes the movie seem longer and more drawn out than necessary.

Also, REKINDLING CHRISTMAS has a strong Romantic, occult worldview with bad theology about ghosts and guardian angels. Then movie tries to mirror the whimsy of the Christmas season with some positive moral elements stressing family values and love, but the movie’s occultism seriously undermines these elements. God warns His people in Deuteronomy 18:10-12 to have nothing to do with people who consult the dead. REKINDLING CHRISTMAS also has a New Age comment where a character mentions “the powers that be” instead of God. Media-wise viewers will find the movie’s occult elements unacceptable.