SPOILER: This movie is about necromancy (communicating with the dead) and makes up its only very weird theology where the spirit of a dead loved one answers your prayers rather than almighty God.
To add insult to injury, the movie ends showing the family going into a church where there is a nativity scene in front, on Christmas Day, implying that their "happy" ending (which I did not find to be such a happy ending) was also Christian in its theology. Absolutely not.
Son goes to Gulf War, is killed in action, family is devastated and since they got the news he died on Christmas or Christmas Eve, they stop celebrating Christmas for years. The movie is strange and slow, even somber. A "miracle" happens when the father is praying at the war memorial in his town that he visits every night and he and some young thugs all hear a voice but cannot see the body. It scares them enough that they don't mug the father of the killed soldier.
Then later in the movie, on Christmas Eve, and after the family decided to finally celebrate Christmas again especially because of the "miracle" and because their young daughter has been diagnosed with cancer, the father runs into a stranger who is going to finish hitching a ride to see his family on Christmas morning. The father invites the young man, who is about the age of his dead son, home for Christmas Eve.
Without going into all the details, it's just creepy how the script progresses with schemes of lies and half-truths. I kept half-expecting the young stranger to be a psycho killer or something. There is a part where the stranger tells the girl with cancer to stop taking her pills because she is going to be okay. He holds her hands and does a visualization with her, and she immediately feels like she "just knows" she is healed. Other little things happen that are like what the Bible speaks of, "showing signs and lying wonders" (2 Thes. 2:9 comes to mind from KJV), and then in the very end the stranger just disintegrates into thin air, showing that he was a spirit of the dead the whole time.
Maybe to a non-Christian it sounds like I am being unfairly biased, but Christmas is a holiday named after Christ Jesus and I do not appreciate a supposed "feel good" movie with a Christmas theme and Christmas in the title being about necromancy, (communicating with the dead), or heeding lying spirits, which is expressly forbidden in the Bible.
To add insult to injury, the movie ends showing the family going into a church where there is a nativity scene in front, on Christmas Day, implying that their "happy" ending (which I did not find to be such a happy ending) was also Christian in its theology. Absolutely not.
Son goes to Gulf War, is killed in action, family is devastated and since they got the news he died on Christmas or Christmas Eve, they stop celebrating Christmas for years. The movie is strange and slow, even somber. A "miracle" happens when the father is praying at the war memorial in his town that he visits every night and he and some young thugs all hear a voice but cannot see the body. It scares them enough that they don't mug the father of the killed soldier.
Then later in the movie, on Christmas Eve, and after the family decided to finally celebrate Christmas again especially because of the "miracle" and because their young daughter has been diagnosed with cancer, the father runs into a stranger who is going to finish hitching a ride to see his family on Christmas morning. The father invites the young man, who is about the age of his dead son, home for Christmas Eve.
Without going into all the details, it's just creepy how the script progresses with schemes of lies and half-truths. I kept half-expecting the young stranger to be a psycho killer or something. There is a part where the stranger tells the girl with cancer to stop taking her pills because she is going to be okay. He holds her hands and does a visualization with her, and she immediately feels like she "just knows" she is healed. Other little things happen that are like what the Bible speaks of, "showing signs and lying wonders" (2 Thes. 2:9 comes to mind from KJV), and then in the very end the stranger just disintegrates into thin air, showing that he was a spirit of the dead the whole time.
Maybe to a non-Christian it sounds like I am being unfairly biased, but Christmas is a holiday named after Christ Jesus and I do not appreciate a supposed "feel good" movie with a Christmas theme and Christmas in the title being about necromancy, (communicating with the dead), or heeding lying spirits, which is expressly forbidden in the Bible.