Netflix’s latest offering, “That Christmas,” is an animated Christmas movie geared toward families. One scene, garnering a lot of attention, mocks the nativity story.
The movie centers on a ragtag group of kids, all led by a rebellious teenager named Bernadette. At one point in the film, the children come together to put on a school Christmas production written by a couple students who feel the biblical nativity story is too antiquated for modern culture.
When Bernadette introduces the program, she describes Jesus as “a cool dude” with a beard and long hair and “into woodwork,” calling him “a hipster basically.”
As the program unfolds, viewers see the shepherds herding vegetables rather than sheep, and the wise men from the scriptural narrative are replaced with three wise women.
The most egregious part of the production, though, comes when the young girl playing the role of Mary, Jesus’ mother, sings, “Papa Don’t Preach,” a 1986 Madonna song about deciding whether to have an abortion.
The girl sings as she’s hoisting a watermelon with a face carved into it, intended to represent baby Jesus. At one point, another student accidentally knocks the watermelon out of the girl’s hands and it falls to the ground, splattering onto the audience.
