“This is a complete
hijacking! This is a hijacking! Hi-handed, hijacking! Handedness-jacking! It's
like a car-jacking of our religion!” –Christian, Saving Christmas
Christmas time is here again. Families will be bonding over the holiday
festivities with gifts, feasts, and some casual drinking. It’s a season of shopping as people search
for that special something for a special someone. The songs fill the air. Holiday movies are on every channel. Somebody makes a joke about their tree
looking like the one from A Charlie Brown
Christmas, even though 95% of the time it doesn’t. But something that rarely gets discussed is the
religious origin of Christmas. Nobody
talks about Jesus being born on Christmas and how the name comes from his
name. Except for Kirk Cameron.
How did he spread the gospel during the holidays? He didn’t bring people to church or do public
appearances. Kirk Cameron produced a
movie called Saving Christmas. It had less to do with saving the day than it
did with opening up one character’s eyes to the lord. Kirk Cameron was at a Christmas party when he
noticed that his brother-in-law, Christian (Darren Doane, the director), wasn’t
filled with the holiday cheer. He
decided to show Christian the way by explaining how his questions about the
sanctity of Christmas could be answered through religion. That was the whole story. Kirk Cameron explained how everything about
Christmas came from The Bible.
Ridiculous is the perfect word to describe Saving Christmas. It began with Kirk Cameron speaking to the
camera about why he loved Christmas, then saying that it is a religious
day. It took six minutes to get that
point across. His wordiness didn’t stop
there. It continued throughout the
movie. He talked so much that it was hypnotic. His words made no sense but he talked so long
in a calm and comforting tone that it was easy to understand how Christian fell
for it. There was also an unwarranted
dance number near the end of the movie. It
had nothing to do with the story. The
narration literally stated that it was an unexpected twist. This scene will haunt me for years to come.
I now want to turn your attention to the title. We’ll get back to the individual segments
later. As was said near the start of
this post, Saving Christmas isn’t a
title that suits the movie. One person’s
belief in Christmas being a religious holiday is saved, but that’s it. Everyone else was having a wonderful holiday
and didn’t need saving. But the title
gets even more confusing when you look around online. In one of the only instances where I will use
Rotten Tomatoes as a reference, the site has the movie listed as Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. On first glance, it is Kirk Cameron’s because
he produced it and was the star. He was
the driving force behind the movie. They
even made light of that fact in a credits joke.
But then you think about the title for a bit and associate it with what
the movie is. It is an hour and a half
of Kirk Cameron talking to the audience through a character named Christian,
about the religious side of Christmas.
He tried to show the audience how great religion is. Therefore, Kirk Cameron’s could be “Kirk
Cameron is”, as in “Kirk Cameron is
Saving Christmas”. He did it through
the stories.
Stories were an essential part of Saving Christmas. The main,
non-Kirk on a chair portion of the movie began with Kirk telling the audience
that everyone has a story. No matter
whether it was big, small, entertaining, or boring, everyone had stories in
their lives. He told the story of what
happened on that fateful Christmas with Christian. Through that story, he told Christian three
different stories about how the different elements of Christmas came to be. It was an Inception
of stories. There were stories in the
story.
The first of the three stories was a response to Christian
saying that Jesus was not born on December 25th. I’m not sure if Kirk Cameron actually gave a
real rebuttal. He talked about Jesus
being born in a cloth, and a cloth being present at Jesus’s death. He talked about it for a long time, to the
point where it was an interesting enough story.
But it had nothing to do with the date of Jesus’s birth. The entire story was simply highlighting the
parallels between his birth and death.
The cloth, the funeral spices… All of the things that were present at
both his birth and death were mentioned.
Not a whole lot about the date was in the story, though.
More irrelevant was the second story. Christian asked what the Christmas tree
symbolized to the biblical idea of Christmas.
The tree was a pagan symbol, not a Christian one, and he didn’t
understand how it was part of biblical religion. Kirk Cameron responded with one of the most
mind-blowingly insane stretches that I’ve heard in a long time. The first part made some sense. Adam took fruit off of one of the trees in
the Garden of Eden, and decorating trees for Christmas is like giving the fruit
back to the trees. Instead of fruit,
we’re giving lights and ornaments, but it works. He could have stopped there and the argument
would have been valid, but he veered off course when bringing Jesus into the
story. Jesus was the last in a long line
of Adams who hadn’t repaid the stolen fruit.
He gave his body by hanging it on the tree. The tree was a cross. Since crosses are made of wood, they count as
trees. And since Jesus was crucified, he
was hanging on the tree.
As the third part of the story trilogy, there was the origin
of Santa Claus. The modern depiction of
a man with a belly like a bowl full of jelly, wearing red and white, coming on
Christmas Eve to give gifts to the good boys and girls doesn’t seem biblical. His “Ho ho ho” demeanor didn’t strike
Christian as religious. It seemed
commercial. Kirk Cameron had a defense
for that. He told Christian about Saint
Nicholas, who lived in the fourth century.
He gave gifts to people who were good in his eyes and punished those who
weren’t. He was present at the first
council of Nicaea. Kirk Cameron said
that he was the inspiration for Santa Claus, which is partially true, and said
that it’s because of religion that Santa Claus exists. What he left out was the commercialism that
Santa has become, and how that has nothing to do with the Saint.
Sadly, these arguments, mixed with the random dance scene, led
to an underwhelming experience. I expected
insanity in a different way. I thought
it was going to be religion mixed in with crazy Christmas action. It wasn’t.
It was religion and that’s all it was.
Kirk Cameron spoke about religion the entire hour and a half, trying to
convince Christian, as well as the audience, that a religious Christmas is the
proper Christmas. His arguments made
little sense, and could easily be countered.
But that’s not the movie. It
wasn’t about giving both sides. It was
about the greatness of religion. I’m all
for believing whatever you want, but you shouldn’t be pushing your religion on
other people. That’s why I don’t like
these kinds of movies. Saving Christmas is another movie that
sidestepped story for religious promotion.
It hurt what was on screen and made for a watch that was the opposite of
fun.
These notes might be a little more fun than the movie:
- Some of the other Christmas movies that have been covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies include A Nanny for Christmas, Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever, and How the Toys Saved Christmas.
- Have you seen Saving Christmas? Have you seen any other religion based Christmas movies? What do you think makes a good Christmas movie? Discuss anything about this post in the comments section below.
- I’m always looking for suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movie installments. Let me know about any movies you think I should cover by putting your suggestions in the comments or on my Twitter feed. Thanks!
- Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I put clips of them into my Snapchat story. If that sounds interesting, you can find me there with the username jurassicgriffin.
- Next week’s movie will conclude the annual December Christmas movie marathon for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. What better day to finish up on than on Christmas? The movie that we’ll be celebrating with is a movie called Elf-Man. It stars Wee Man from the Jackass group. I’ll let you know more about it next week. See you then.
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