Aspiring astronomy professor and Christmas enthusiast Holly (Sarah Carter) is crushed when her longtime boyfriend Adam (Paul Popowich) schedules a business trip and leaves her alone over the holidays. When she decides to surprise both Adam and her parents with a Christmas visit, however, fate, or perhaps the Christmas spirit, intervenes. Holly’s bumpy holiday travel makes a turn onto the road to romance when she and her bus companion, Luke (Damon Runyan), forge an instant connection over their love of constellations and Christmas. In the spirit of the season, Holly invites Luke and his brother Bull (George Canyon) to join her family and Adam for Christmas, which instantly creates a competition between Luke and Adam for Holly’s attention. As sparks fly like shooting stars between Holly and Luke, will Holly decide to play it safe and stay with Adam or to thank her lucky stars for the Christmas gift of romance with Luke? <\/em><\/p>\nReview:<\/strong> This is the first of 12 original films airing this season as part of Hallmark Channel’s annual Countdown to Christmas <\/em>programming slate (which all told includes over 1000 hours of holiday-themed programming).\u00a0 While I’m an old-fashioned sort of guy who kinda thinks TV Christmas specials should start no sooner than around Thanksgiving, there’s no denying Hallmark’s success with its yearly yuletide countdown. And, I must say, I’ll take Hallmark’s jump-starting of the holiday celebration over what the broadcast networks these days seems, at best, a grudging acknowledgement of it.<\/p>\nAnd, as its first original film of the season, Hallmark has picked a real charmer with One Starry Christmas<\/em>. First of all, Sarah Carter is absolutely winning (and beautiful) as the aptly-named Christmas-loving astronomer Holly. Carter as Holly the astronomer shares genuine chemistry with\u00a0 Damon Runyan as Luke, the rodeo rider she meets on a bus that kismetically breaks down while on her way to meet up with her ambition lawyer boyfriend Adam (Paul Popowich) and her parents in New York.\u00a0 Runyan, BTW, looks right at home playing a cowboy learning the ropes in NYC. If anyone is considering remaking the iconic seventies series McCloud<\/em>, they should give his performance here a look. The bottom line for this film though is that you can believe that these two would actually fall for each other.<\/p>\nBesides the central relationship, the relationships between Holly and her parents and Luke and his brother are also sweet in a way that comes off as real and believable. Also believable is that, once upon a time, Holly might have seen something in Adam but, upon closer inspection, might reconsider.<\/p>\n
All in all, One Starry Christmas<\/em> is a nice and pleasant diversion about people you’ll root for and a story told with timeless insight and an attitude of kindness. I liked it.<\/p>\nOne Starry Nigh<\/em>t is recommended.<\/strong><\/p>\nEncourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JpzSF4fcl_o One Starry Christmas airs tomorrow night (11\/1) @ 8:00 PM ET on Hallmark Channel. Synopsis (from the Hallmark Channel website): Aspiring astronomy professor and Christmas enthusiast Holly (Sarah Carter) is crushed when her longtime boyfriend Adam (Paul Popowich) schedules a business trip and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3632,24,31],"tags":[7519,35,7531,7532,7528,7530,7529],"class_list":["post-5581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-christmas","category-movies","category-television","tag-hallmark-channels-annual-countdown-to-christmas","tag-1-thessalonians-511","tag-damon-runyan","tag-george-canyon","tag-one-starry-christmas","tag-paul-popowich","tag-sarah-carter"],"yoast_head":"\n
Sarah Carter gets a cowboy for Christmas as Hallmark Channel launches its annual holiday countdown<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/10\/sarah-carter-gets-a-cowboy-for-christmas-as-hallmark-channel-launches-its-annual-holiday-countdown.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sarah Carter gets a cowboy for Christmas as Hallmark Channel launches its annual holiday countdown\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JpzSF4fcl_o One Starry Christmas airs tomorrow night (11\/1) @ 8:00 PM ET on Hallmark Channel. 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Synopsis (from the Hallmark Channel website): Aspiring astronomy professor and Christmas enthusiast Holly (Sarah Carter) is crushed when her longtime boyfriend Adam (Paul Popowich) schedules a business trip and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/10\/sarah-carter-gets-a-cowboy-for-christmas-as-hallmark-channel-launches-its-annual-holiday-countdown.html","og_site_name":"Faith, Media & Culture","article_published_time":"2014-10-31T15:37:48+00:00","author":"John W. 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He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media & Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations & Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5583,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions\/5583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}