Kirk Cameron is upset that people don’t understand Halloween: they dress up in costumes without understanding the holiday’s meaning. In an interview with The Christian Post the actor feels that Christians should embrace the tradition of dressing up because it symbolizes Christ’s defeat of death. “Early on, 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,” he said. “The costumes poke fun at the fact that the devil and other evils were publicly humiliated by Christ at His resurrection. 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. 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.”
Well, yes, sort of. While Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve) is today a Christian celebration, it was originally a pagan holiday, the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the harvest. The Celts believed that on October 31st “the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.” Wearing masks and costumes was “an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.” Cameron may not like this particular fact. He certainly shouldn’t Google “Halloween History”; it will only make him want to smash his computer.
P.S. Cameron is also on a mission to save Christmas.
