Kirk Cameron is putting the Kirk Cameron back in Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. Theoretically, it’s a documentary about how the origins of all Christmas traditions are based 100% on the Bible with zero pagan influence whatsoever, do you hear me you lying godless historians?! But here’s the kicker: even the evangelical fringe don’t belief that shit. It’s purely a Kirk Cameron thing—an ego-driven crusade to push his personal/delusional opinion of what human history ought to be (and therefore, ipso facto, is) on the evangelical masses.
Gosh, it must be really annoying for them to have a holier-than-thou, has-been TV heartthrob trying to shove his own personal Biblical interpretation down their throats. We can only imagine what that must be like.
According to Kirk, the Bible is the inspiration for Christmas trees and Dec. 25 is the actual day of Christ’s birth. Any insinuation otherwise is an attack on Christmas and the Christian faith itself. Which is weird, because it means even extremists like the Liberty Counsel (keepers of the “naughty or nice” list of retails who say “Happy Holidays”) and Sarah Palin (who is Sarah Palin) are fighting for the enemy.
“It’s important to know your roots. A lot of things we do today have pagan and pre-Christian origins,”says Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel.
“Does that mean Christians won the ‘war on Saturnalia’? You bet,” says Palin in her book Good Tidings and Great Joy.
I bet you didn’t realize that all you godless liberal whores are on the same side of the War on Christmas as Sister Sarah, did ya? Well, you are if you buy into Kirk Cameron’s reinterpretation of Palin’s reinterpretation of medieval Christianity’s reinterpretation of local religious traditions throughout Europe.
And woe be to anyone who questions the commercialism and gluttony of Christmas! In the Gospel of Kirk, even those things have Biblical origins and must be protected as sacred tradition!
(Details after the squiggle)
Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas opens with Kirk’s brother-in-law pulling a Charlie Brown over the excessive consumerism of Christmas time in America. With all the money he spent on presents and decorations and a lavish party, “how many kids could we have fed? How many wells could we have dug?” he wonders.
Fuck the poor and the hungry, answers Kirk. He’s not even sure they’re mentioned in the Bible. Instead, the Bible is all about gratuitous self-indulgence in Christ’s name. Rejecting even the least tradition or buying anything less than the most expensive gifts and foods, he argues, is a slap in the face of Our Lord and Savior.
Are we exaggerating? Check out Peter Sobczynski’s review at RogerEbert.com and judge for yourself:
To his eyes, every gaudy symbol of the season that is putting Christian off has deep-seated religious roots, and only by venerating them in the most ostentatious manner imaginable can one be truly close to God. Take Christmas trees and Santa Claus, for example—even though such things are never mentioned in the Bible, Kirk uses cherry-picked Biblical details, a certain degree of extrapolation and no small amount of smugness (“Last I checked, God made the Winter Solstice”) to prove his points with such stunning finality that [his brother-in-law] instantly realizes that he has been the jerk all along for “terrorizing” his family by not realizing, for example, that the giant stack of presents under the tree can suggest the skyline of the new Jerusalem. [...]
“Saving Christmas” is little more than a screed delivered by Kirk Cameron scorning everyone who doesn’t celebrate the season as ostentatiously as he does, justifying his attitude with bits and pieces gleaned from the Bible, delivered in the most self-righteous manner imaginable. The result is perhaps the only Christmas movie I can think of, especially of the religious-themed variety, that seems to flat-out endorse materialism, greed and outright gluttony.
Linus must have skipped that verse in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Sadly, Kirk Cameron’s personal branding wasn’t enough to save Kirk Cameron’s pseudo-documentary from bombing at the box office, even by evangelical Christian movie standards. Opening at 410 locations, the film earned just under a million dollars over the weekend—a pathetic $2,420 per theater average.
(For comparison, his firefighter-overcomes-porn-addict Christian drama Fireproof earned $6.8 million in its opening weekend, for a $8,148 per theater average.)
Cross-posted at Happy Nice Time People.