Kirk Cameron Will Have You Know Halloween Is a Christian Holiday
Kirk Cameron recently popped by my favorite Internet publication, the Christian Post (it’s like HuffPo mated with a church newsletter!), for a little chat about his upcoming motion picture release, Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. And he had a message for you believers: Halloween is totally OK to celebrate, because Halloween is basically a Christian holiday.
From the Christian Post:
“Saving Christmas” debunks theories that Christmas began as a pagan celebration of Winter Solstice. In a recent interview, Cameron addressed the same theories as they are applied to Halloween, clarifying why Christians “should have the biggest Halloween party on your block.”
“The real origins have a lot to do with All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve,” the actor told The Christian Post. “If you go back to old church calendars, especially Catholic calendars, they recognize the holiday All Saints Day, with All Hallows Eve the day before, when they would remember the dead. That’s all tied in to Halloween.”
Here is where I like to picture a Druid, an early medieval bishop and Pat Roberston simultaneously giving Kirk Cameron the side-eye. You think they plunked All Saints Day down right next to Samhain because Jesus died for your pumpkin spice lattes? Whatever. Cameron wants all y’all Christians to throw out-and-out evangelical RAGERS on Halloween night:
“Halloween gives you a great opportunity to show how Christians celebrate the day that death was defeated, and you can give them Gospel tracts and tell the story of how every ghost, goblin, witch and demon was trounced the day Jesus rose from the grave. Clearly no Christians ought to be glorifying death, because death was defeated, and that was the point of All Hallows Eve.”
IN FACT, this whole misunderstanding is really a case of the pagans jacking something that belonged to Christians in the first place, because that’s pagans for you, just plain rude:
“Over time you get some pagans who want to go this is our day, high holy day of Satanic church, that this is all about death, but Christians have always known since the first century that death was defeated, that the grave was overwhelmed, that ghosts, goblins, devils are foolish has-beens who used to be in power but not anymore. That’s the perspective Christians should have.”
Obviously, All Saints’ Day has been parked on the Christian calendar for a very long time. But let’s be clear who invented what has since evolved into Halloween: not Christianity. We already have to listen to weeks of carping about the “War on Christmas.” We’re not gonna let Mike fucking Seaver hijack the holiday dedicated to mayhem, horror and gluttony, too. HANDS OFF THE BOWL OF PEELED GRAPES LABELED AS EYEBALLS, SEAVER.
(h/t Wonkette)
Image via Getty.