Historian Kirk Cameron declares that Halloween is christian

[thoughtful]

I'm going to dress up as Kirk Cameron for Halloween. Scare all the neighborhood kids when they come by. I've got the vacant stare down pat.

Current, solemn, squinty Kirk, or, you know . . .

(credit to clarinetpower for the LOL, from this thread - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12302&start=80)

In an interview published by The Christian Post on Monday, Cameron explained that the “real origins†of Halloween had to do with a Catholic Church tradition of remembering the dead before All Saints Day.

Catholics? Saints? :shock: :pink-shock: Gee, Kirk, I think a lot of your humpers think Catholics are worse than Satanists.

“When you go out on Halloween and see all people dressed in costumes and see someone in a great big bobble head Obama costume with great big ears and an Obama face, are they honoring him or poking fun?†the actor asked. “They are poking fun at him.â€

Cameron observed that mocking President Barack Obama with a Halloween mask was similar to when “Christians would dress up in costumes as the devil, ghosts, goblins and witches precisely to make the point that those things were defeated and overthrown by the resurrected Jesus Christ.â€

“The costumes poke fun at the fact that the devil and other evils were publicly humiliated by Christ at His resurrection,†he continued. “That’s what the Scriptures say, that He publicly humiliated the devil when He triumphed over power and principality and put them under his feet.â€

Gee, I wonder why he didn't start with an image of someone dressed up as, oh, a devil, or an axe murderer, or Death.

Why Obama? Kirk, do you want the president to be "publicly humiliated by Christ?" Hmmmm . . . this is too hard for me.

Kirk, can you be clearer? :roll:

[Mela99]

So Obama is satan and only on Halloween Kirk can hope to defeat him. Got it.

[anniebgood]

Can we have Yule back?

Though I am Christian and the husband says Science is God, every year we go to the local wood lot and get a big log to burn for Yule. Of course, we're not here for the solstice as it's our wedding anniversary.I think the Gods of Las Vegas Hotels would be a bit askance if we asked to burn one in our hotel room. But we'll throw it on the fireplace Christmas Eve and hope it burns through the next day.

:P

edited because I can't remember proper grammar when my tummy's upset.

[blisterine]

I accidentally watched some show on Hallmark Channel today when my husband sat down on the remote. Kirk Cameron was some kind of guest host. He said they are considering making continuations of "Full House" and "Growing Pains" with the old casts. I can't wait to watch them for snark value and also have the casts of both go skirts only!

[Jana814]

maybe all the on-set hairspray on growing pains affected his oxygen supply.

HAHA!!

[VelociRapture]

As someone descended from the ancient Celts, can I claim this as an example of cultural appropriation?

[DGayle]

When did Kirk Cameron become such an idiot?

There's a real definite answer to this. Before the start of the last season of Growing Pains, he went from atheist to born-again, and the show ended up having to end because of him. He accused the president of the network of being a pedophile because there was going to be an episode where Mike's girlfriend offers him a key to her place. He and that actress got married quickly in real life, and not a single cast member was there. Either they weren't invited, or they were invited and all didn't show up. From there on, he got worse, until the show had to be stopped. They just couldn't work with him anymore.

[samurai_sarah]

maybe all the on-set hairspray on growing pains affected his oxygen supply.

That would explain so much about Jim Boob and his use of Aquanet (?).

[FloraKitty35]

There's a real definite answer to this. Before the start of the last season of Growing Pains, he went from atheist to born-again, and the show ended up having to end because of him. He accused the president of the network of being a pedophile because there was going to be an episode where Mike's girlfriend offers him a key to her place. He and that actress got married quickly in real life, and not a single cast member was there. Either they weren't invited, or they were invited and all didn't show up. From there on, he got worse, until the show had to be stopped. They just couldn't work with him anymore.

Years ago E! did a True Hollywood Story about "Growing Pains". Alan Thicke stated that none of the cast were invited to Kirk Cameron's wedding, IIRC.

[Triplet3]

Meh. While I agree that Kirk Cameron is nutty, there is actually serious academic scholarship showing that Hallowe'en has some very old Christian elements (All Hallows Eve etc) and that there isn't much real historical evidence for pagan origins. The same with many so-called 'pagan' elements of Christmas. I love reading about calendar customs, festivals, celebrations, folklore etc. and there is (or was in the past) a very strong, unacademically-supported view that aspects many modern celebrations must have ancient, pagan origins, without solid historical evidence for it.

[samurai_sarah]

Meh. While I agree that Kirk Cameron is nutty, there is actually serious academic scholarship showing that Hallowe'en has some very old Christian elements (All Hallows Eve etc) and that there isn't much real historical evidence for pagan origins. The same with many so-called 'pagan' elements of Christmas. I love reading about calendar customs, festivals, celebrations, folklore etc. and there is (or was in the past) a very strong, unacademically-supported view that aspects many modern celebrations must have ancient, pagan origins, without solid historical evidence for it.

There may not be much evidence, but some local Christian traditions make one wonder. The deeply Catholic area in Germany, where I'm from, seems to be fixated on fire. There's little to no historical record, as to why most of our religious holidays are so concerned with fire. Ancient origins? Who knows? All we know is that these elements aren't present in other Catholic traditions. It is therefore easy to presume that there must be a reason, which may pre-date written records.

Without records however, it is impossible to tell, and leaves the entire thing up to speculation.

[browncoatslytherin]

There may not be much evidence, but some local Christian traditions make one wonder. The deeply Catholic area in Germany, where I'm from, seems to be fixated on fire. There's little to no historical record, as to why most of our religious holidays are so concerned with fire. Ancient origins? Who knows? All we know is that these elements aren't present in other Catholic traditions. It is therefore easy to presume that there must be a reason, which may pre-date written records.

Without records however, it is impossible to tell, and leaves the entire thing up to speculation.

i hadn't heard of that, samurai, but that's really interesting! i wonder if some things weren't just cultural traditions and then given pagan and christian components later on.

[Mama Mia]

What I really don't get is why would the extremists turn their backs on these holidays just because they think they were originally pagan/non-Christian? ( whatever the actual origins are)

I would think, if they believe Christianity is the one true religion, and they tend to be evangelical and dominionist --- wouldn't folding local holidays in and re shaping as a Christian celebration be a demonstration of the successful spread of their belief system?

I don't get it.

[FoxyMoxie]

I've always done a Yule log along with the tree and other festivities. I'm not Wiccan (nothing wrong with that) but do recognize Pagan ritual as the basis for all major holidays. May Day (beltane), Solstice (winter and summer), Samhain, etc...all matriculated by the church into modern day gift grabs and ritualized around Christ. It's just weird to me that people (fundie, fundie lite, bible thumpers) are so blind to the origins of humanity. If they really do believe in and study the literal message of the bible then the KJV isn't the way. The books of the bible were written in Aramaic. There are whole communites of doctoral scholars who continue to TRY to understand its true meaning. It is a complicated and ancient language. It isn't black and white.

I'm just saying that in this modern world, after multiple translations into various languages, nothing is interpreted as it was originally intended and even if you take the Bible as a divine message from God then shouldn't we take the time to learn it's original message before staking your life and the lives of your children on something akin to the "telephone game"?

I guess that is one of the things that grates my nerve the most...espousing beliefs that you don't understand, preaching messages that aren't true, claiming to have a ministry while personally profiting, living by Leviticus - but only the parts that suit you...and I could go on. This turned into a random rant. Oops.

In short: yeah, I bet we see Kirk dressed as Obama this year - to honor God!

The 1st of May is the Feast of St Joseph the Worker - I'm curious as to what gift grab you've seen the church turn that into. I get what you're trying to say but I think you're aiming it at the wrong place, wrt the commercialisation of holidays. It's not the church who turned them into gift grabs - certainly not with All Saints and All Souls which are very different to secular Halloween celebrations - but capitalism. After all, capitalism can't make money out of people attending a church service. Most of the real gift grab aspects of holidays are secular ones - decorations, trees, food, presents. Indeed, Halloween's success in the US is down to it being a secular holiday in its modern form (and unrelated to both Christianity and Northern European Paganism) and therefore able to be celebrated by immigrants of all backgrounds in what is a nation of many immigrants.

I'm slightly confused as to who you're aiming these comments at - fundie Protestants or Catholics/other liturgical Christians? The only holidays fundie Protestants are going to celebrate are Christmas and Easter, none of the others. Catholics and mainstream Protestants largely do not take the Bible literally, certainly not the KJV anyway.

Also, very little of the Bible was written in Aramaic. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, with small fragments in Aramaic, although Jesus would have spoken Aramaic.

[FoxyMoxie]

What I really don't get is why would the extremists turn their backs on these holidays just because they think they were originally pagan/non-Christian? ( whatever the actual origins are)

I would think, if the believe Christianity is the one true religion, and they tend to be evangelical and dominionist --- wouldn't folding local holidays in and re shaping as a Christian celebration be a demonstration of the successful spread of their belief system?

I font get it.

They would point to the Old Testament where it talks about God telling the Israelites not to celebrate festivals that even resemble foreign ones. A festival with Pagan origins would still count as Pagan.

[bionicmlle]

My mom once had me dress up as an angel for Halloween. WWKCD??? Was I making fun of ANGELS??? :gasp:

[Triplet3]

i hadn't heard of that, samurai, but that's really interesting! i wonder if some things weren't just cultural traditions and then given pagan and christian components later on.

I agree, slytherin. For example, using sarahsamurai's example of fire - a couple of thousand years ago, way before electricity etc. or knowledge of the science involved, wouldn't it be perfectly natural for anyone - Christian, Pagan, whatever - to hold fire up as a wonder? And would it necessarily always have a religious/spiritual element to it, since the time when fire was first discovered by humans? And could Christians 2000-1500 years ago have used fire in their worship, in the form of candles etc., not because they were stealing a pagan custom and twisting it for their own purposes, but because they personally, culturally thought fire was amazing and thought it represented well their Light of the World?

Another example I can think of is the use of evergreen plants as Christmas decorations, which some claim to be evidence that Christmas has appropriated pagan usage. But first of all, there's no historical written evidence specifically linking modern/early modern Christian use of evergreens to ancient pagan use of them. Secondly, hundreds of years ago, with what else could people have used to decorate their houses? Paper was expensive and didn't come in different colours, flowers didn't grow at that time of the year, etc.étc. So evergreens were pretty much the only option. And thirdly, just because a custom occurs at a religious festival doesn't necessarily mean that the custom itself is religious, it can just be cultural. Slight tangent here, but last year I did a Tudor Christmas cookery course with Ruth Goodman (a historian who appears in various 'living history' TV programmes here in the UK where experts live in the past for a period of time), and she talked a lot about how even 450 years ago in Tudor times, Christmas in England was more secular than religious! Christmas has always culturally been more an excuse for a big get-together and feast than a particularly religious occasion.

Sorry, I've rambled a bit here and I'm not sure I've properly answered what you said in your post!

[FoxyMoxie]

I'm pretty surprised to see Cameron talk about Catholicism in such a positive way - that doesn't normally happen with fundie Protestants. Obviously Northern European Paganism had its own festivals before Christian ones, but there was more diversity between tribes than people realise and there wasn't one universal celebration. Modern Wiccan and/or Pagan celebrations of Samhain and Yule are modern recreations/inventions and probably not especially like the ancient ones. In that way it's not much different to celebrating Halloween or Christmas.

Browncoat Slytherin, yes there was a Celtic branch of the Church, founded by St Columba. St Patrick founded the Church in Ireland but according to the Roman tradition. The differences between the Celtic Church (based in Iona) and the Roman Church have been largely overstated - monks were tonsured differently and a different way of dating Easter was used, but actually it was a perfectly orthodox branch of Catholicism. There was more of a tendency to use local symbols and festivals to explain Christian doctrine but that doctrine wasn't any different to the Church in Rome's. The Synod of Whitby in the seventh century was when it was decided to follow the Roman calendar and tonsure.

[samurai_sarah]

i hadn't heard of that, samurai, but that's really interesting! i wonder if some things weren't just cultural traditions and then given pagan and christian components later on.

I hadn't known either, until I got together with an American, Korean and Irish Catholic in my first month at uni. We were happily chatting away, glad to have found fellow Catholics, until all of us went "wait...you do...what?!?".

The thing is that these customs aren't written down anywhere. They are completely unremarkable. Up until that moment, when I realized how puzzled they all were by some of our local customs, and how puzzled I was by theirs. The trouble is that there are few to no records.

Our obsession with fire is explained, by the Roman Catholic Church, by Christ bringing light to the world. Who knows where it started. But apparently surrounding your entire church with kindling once a year, and setting the kindling on fire is more of a local tradition. Every big festival involves fire, which "outsiders" find strange. And then, there are the traditional baked goods, which you get for Carnival, Martinmas and New Year's.

At Carnival, you get dougnuts (no hole) filled with jam, deep-fried in lard. Martinmas, you get a soft, sweet pretzel. New Year's, males get a soft, sweet pretzel. females get a soft, sweet "ring". It only makes sense if you look at whatever was available in an agricultural community, but no one bothered to write it down.

So, who knows? ;)

[infooverload]

Speaking of Christians and Halloween does anyone else think the trunk or treat idea is just wrong. I told my husband no way would I take our son to one. We teach kids the rest of the year not to approach people in cars offering candy, then for Halloween we condone people gathering in a parking lot and giving away candy from their trunks. I know a lot of people think oh how novel and fun, but it just makes me uneasy.

[church_of_dog]

Someone should send her the link to this article. *smirk*

*snicker*

[browncoatslytherin]

Speaking of Christians and Halloween does anyone else think the trunk or treat idea is just wrong. I told my husband no way would I take our son to one. We teach kids the rest of the year not to approach people in cars offering candy, then for Halloween we condone people gathering in a parking lot and giving away candy from their trunks. I know a lot of people think oh how novel and fun, but it just makes me uneasy.

if i was still christian, i would likely participate. explaining that this is the only time accepting candy and treats from cars is okay (and at church, no less) and not okay at other times is a pretty simple explanation, imo. i also wouldn't preclude doing trick or treating itself, if my community offered it, but if the child doesn't want to or gets tired easily, i could see trunk or treat being a better option. kids are pretty smart and i'm sure they don't go up to houses asking for candy and treats at other times of the year, same thing with accepting candy and treats from strangers in general, so i don't see trunk or treat as any different.

[Triplet3]

I hadn't known either, until I got together with an American, Korean and Irish Catholic in my first month at uni. We were happily chatting away, glad to have found fellow Catholics, until all of us went "wait...you do...what?!?".

The thing is that these customs aren't written down anywhere. They are completely unremarkable. Up until that moment, when I realized how puzzled they all were by some of our local customs, and how puzzled I was by theirs. The trouble is that there are few to no records.

Our obsession with fire is explained, by the Roman Catholic Church, by Christ bringing light to the world. Who knows where it started. But apparently surrounding your entire church with kindling once a year, and setting the kindling on fire is more of a local tradition. Every big festival involves fire, which "outsiders" find strange. And then, there are the traditional baked goods, which you get for Carnival, Martinmas and New Year's.

At Carnival, you get dougnuts (no hole) filled with jam, deep-fried in lard. Martinmas, you get a soft, sweet pretzel. New Year's, males get a soft, sweet pretzel. females get a soft, sweet "ring". It only makes sense if you look at whatever was available in an agricultural community, but no one bothered to write it down.

So, who knows? ;)

It's very possible that the fire custom hasn't always been that elaborate. Very few customs remain the same for centuries on end, and it is a documented phenomenon that customs tend to get more elaborate even within a decade, let alone a century, let alone a millennium. So if you went back 500 years, for example, it may be that the Catholics in your area of Germany had a more modest, less elaborate use of fire, maybe just involving candles or something (which is common to various other branches of Christianity).

[FoxyMoxie]

I hadn't known either, until I got together with an American, Korean and Irish Catholic in my first month at uni. We were happily chatting away, glad to have found fellow Catholics, until all of us went "wait...you do...what?!?".

The thing is that these customs aren't written down anywhere. They are completely unremarkable. Up until that moment, when I realized how puzzled they all were by some of our local customs, and how puzzled I was by theirs. The trouble is that there are few to no records.

Our obsession with fire is explained, by the Roman Catholic Church, by Christ bringing light to the world. Who knows where it started. But apparently surrounding your entire church with kindling once a year, and setting the kindling on fire is more of a local tradition. Every big festival involves fire, which "outsiders" find strange. And then, there are the traditional baked goods, which you get for Carnival, Martinmas and New Year's.

At Carnival, you get dougnuts (no hole) filled with jam, deep-fried in lard. Martinmas, you get a soft, sweet pretzel. New Year's, males get a soft, sweet pretzel. females get a soft, sweet "ring". It only makes sense if you look at whatever was available in an agricultural community, but no one bothered to write it down.

So, who knows? ;)

It's interesting how Martinmas is just no longer a thing at all in the Commonwealth (and maybe France and Belgium?) because of Armistice Day (St Martin's Day is the 11th of November for those who don't know). St Martin is, appropriately, the saint of both soldiers and pacifists. I've never heard of anywhere but Germany marking Martinmas.

Of course the festival you most associate with fire in the UK is Bonfire Night which is decidedly not Catholic :lol: The bonfires and parades in Lewes look amazing, so much fire!

[FoxyMoxie]

I don't know what trunk or treat is, it's not something you get at evangelical Light Parties in the UK. America seems so car-obsessed!

In the UK Halloween is really just for kids and I just don't care about it? Happy to give out sweets but I don't decorate for it or anything. For me the time of year is just All Saints and All Souls and just about remembering those gone before us, at church services.