Saving Christmas From People Like Kirk Cameron

When I tell you that Kirk Cameron’s Christianity is performative, it’s not that I don’t believe he’s a Christian. For the most part, I don’t judge people’s personal beliefs. What I will say is that everything, to him, is about showing you how Christian he is. So you know. It’s very important to him that you know. He’s such a Christian, you guys, he’s, like, the most Christian. No one is more Christian than he is. And if you’re not Christian his way, do you even Christian, bro? So he doesn’t have to, like, cite Bible verses, a thing he’s asked to do in this movie and doesn’t. He doesn’t have to, like, help the poor, a thing he says is a good thing almost as an after thought. He sure as hell doesn’t have to do research.

We start out with a smug Kirk Cameron sitting in a chair talking about how some people want people to Christmas less, and some people tell him he’s Christmasing wrong. So now he’s going to tell you the story of how he was obnoxious and smug to his “brother-in-law,” Christian (Darren Doane, the scriptwriter and director), who is hiding out in the car because he can’t cope with the whole thing anymore. Because, seriously, what does it have to do with Jesus. So he tells a lot of stories about what it has to do with Jesus and then at the end basically admits that he made it all up.

So like almost everything he tells you is the history of Christmas traditions is wrong, but that’s okay, because he also says toward the end of the movie that you can just make crap like that up so your Christmas traditions are actually about Jesus. Even though, no, they are not. The Christmas tree has pre-Christian origins, and while the origins of a lot of traditions are more complicated than “and then they stole it from Pagans,” this is the first time I’ve ever heard a suggestion that the Christmas tree is actually a cross between the Tree of Life and the cross. I mean, I was raised Catholic, so by Kirk’s standards I was never a Christian anyway, but I’ve also been in Young Earth Creationism-debunking circles over the last few years, and it’s still the first I’ve heard of it.

The date of Christmas is probably associated with more than just Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, but it’s also true that most societies have a celebration of the winter solstice and it’s easier to win people over if you syncretize their holidays. The idea that it’s because Jesus was conceived and died on the same day only dates to the nineteenth century, and the person whose idea it was himself admitted he couldn’t find textual evidence for it. So why is Christmas in winter? Because Sun, but possibly not Sol Invictus. Shepherds only watch their flocks by night at lambing time, which December isn’t.

As for the swaddling stuff, that’s deeply hilarious to someone whose son was the Houdini of the maternity ward as a newborn. There’s something something Jesus escaped his swaddling something something he also escaped the shroud, which is . . . bonkers. And implies my son is the Second Coming, something I don’t think Kirk Cameron would like. There’s a lot of imagery that is definitely a thing. The theology is terrible.

This is also the most wholehearted endorsement of commercialism in Christmas that I’ve ever heard. There’s brief lip service paid to the idea that maybe you shouldn’t max out your credit cards or try to buy friends. Equally brief paid to the idea that maybe helping the needy should be a thing. Hell, he doesn’t even, when he’s giving the most ahistorical historical summary of St. Nicholas of Myra I’ve ever heard, mention more than once that the reason St. Nicholas became associated with the holiday was because of his history of charity. There’s just an incredibly inaccurate version of the First Council of Nicaea, for some reason at an inn somewhere snowy instead of a Turkish palace, talking about a point of theology that there’s no reason to believe Nicholas was really involved in anyway.

Based on his petulant introduction, it’s clear that Kirk would be shocked to know that I don’t actually have a problem with a certain public celebration of Christmas, and I certainly don’t have a problem with syncretism. I don’t want him preaching his religion at me, not least because he’s just really bad at it, but if your winter holiday of choice is Christmas, more power to you. It’s one of the holidays in “happy holidays.” Along with Thanksgiving and New Year’s, holidays I’m quite sure he also celebrates.

Oh, am I just picking on the history and theology? Yeah, that’s because there’s literally nothing else to this except the whitest hip-hop dance routine I’ve ever seen. Kirk smarms at us about how the way he does things is the right way and you’re wrong to think he could possibly be wrong. That’s it; that’s the movie. In one of the only funny Razzie jokes of recent years, “Worst Screen Pairing” for that year went to Kirk Cameron and his ego.

He pretends to think this will convince anyone who isn’t his particular stripe of Christian—and make no mistake, if you aren’t his stripe, you are actually an atheist. But that’s not really what this is about. This is about telling the people in the pews that they’re right. It’s about being seen to think about your faith without having to actually think about your faith. If Kirk, and of course Darren Doane, put real thought into what they’re saying, and did real research, they might have to admit they’re wrong. And they’re not going to do that, because they can’t be. That’s the foundation of their belief far more than Jesus is.