Okay, one, I enjoyed the shit out of this read because any reason to hate on Christmas movies and I am DOWN. I once listened to a Canadian line producer go on an extended rant about the abject absurdity of Christmas movies because their only market is American, their sell season is short, their market is thin and their profits are nonexistent. Christmas movies are ghastly stupid from an economic standpoint and bring out the absolute worst in filmed entertainment. I think it says something that the pantheon of Christmas movies is It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Die Hard and eighty-eight skidillion forgettable pieces of shit that nobody will ever even pause when they need to get more egg-nog because who the fuck cares. Fucking Love Actually? It's "We Are the World" as cinema. Eat shit. Two, though, y'all whippersnappers prolly grew up with Hallmark Channel without ever having to live through the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network and the American Christian Television System. See, when I was a kid we just called it "the God Channel" and it had Jerry Fucking Falwell on it and the fact that in my lifetime I've seen the channel that aired "Davey & Goliath" tuck their fucking tail and go "okay we relent here's your lesbian kiss" is a fucking win for the ages and if they're showing "a trip into an uncanny valley of shiny-teethed, blow-dried heteronormative whiteness" (zomg I am so jealous of that sentence) it's pretty much all they have left of their previous godhatesfags.com existence as the place where the Southern Baptist Convention demanded prayer in school. So yeah - they're terrible and they enforce all the wrong lessons on a population that doesn't need to hear this shit. But they're also largely enjoyed and championed by the 'boomers that miss Jerry Fucking Falwell who now have to put up with angry Twitter SJWs forcing them to watch lesbians kiss during the commercials which is their lot in life because their son won't program their universal remote without hiding Fox News from the channel lineup so I'm gonna put this in the "we have further to go" column rather than the "things are getting worse" column if it's all the same to you.
I guess because I crawled under my rock around the time it came into being I was unaware the Hallmark Channel existed, so you just made my evening sending me down the decline and fall of the tv god-botherer empire rabbit hole. Thank you for that. hey poor, you don't have to be poor anymore
It doesn't balance out Sinclair eating the world or The Learning Channel becoming the home of Honey Boo Boo but the decline and fall of the televangelism empire is one of the bright spots. If you haven't seen The Eyes of Tammy Faye you're missing out.
It's not just an American thing. I sat down a few years ago and had a real good chat with a local priest, just kind of shooting the breeze. At one point we talked a bit about their aging congregation and the struggles of mainline churches to appeal to younger people. The subject of Mega Churches came up and one of the things they told me was that those kinds of churches actually have a really high turnover rate. As in, 90% of congregates stick around for a year at best, and most check out well before then. I don't know how to look up if that's actually tree or not, but talking to quite a few Christian friends of mine over the years, it seems pretty believable. The size of those churches add an energy to everything, almost like going to a concert, but unless you find a clique or something to fall into, there's not a real sense of community or personal empowerment. Coffee shop and bar churches on the other hand, are like the other end of the spectrum. Me? I'm not Christian, but sometimes I like going to a church, sitting down, and hear someone preach for a while. I've found I've been pretty comfortable with both mainline churches and coffee shop churches. Both tend to be pretty welcoming in the sense they're like "Hey, new face! Welcome!" and I'm like "Thanks! I'm just kind of passing through and just hear for some coffee and a little sermon, if that's alright." It almost always is.