I appreciate the effort of writer to deepen and understanding of Christmas for the viewer. Efforts like this hopefully can serve to make the Christmas message more real and vital for the average person. But it terms of the rendition I found myself wanting to turn it off multiple times. The characters were underdeveloped and the poor acting was unengaging. I understood the "idea" of Simeon's character, but could see none of that actually portrayed in his person. Same with Jon. And the love between those characters with the female lead, Marjorie, had no time to develop, so one could not empathize with the very deep human struggles both men were intended to portray. This movie scratches the surface of some profound issues, perhaps it seeks to deal with too many big issues for such a minor film, and, in my view, fails terribly in the underdeveloped presentation and poor acting. Also I think the Catholic Church was not correctly portrayed, both in the way it works, and in the details of the sacramental rituals. I found the "confession" thing a bit trivialized and ridiculous, and, as such reinforces inaccurate ideas about the Church that makes such rituals seem meaningless and stupid for people who do not know the Church experientially.