With Halloween just a week away, revelers are already planning to celebrate the non-official holiday and deciding what costumes to wear. But actor Kirk Cameron is speaking out big time on Halloween, declaring his belief that the day actually has biblical roots and should be celebrated by Christians “as the biggest Halloween party on your block.”
The former Growing Pains star clarified his views in an interview with the Christian Post.
“The real origins have a lot to do with All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. If you go back to old church calendars, especially Catholic calendars, they recognize the holiday All Saints Day, with All Hallows Eve the day before, when they would remember the dead. That’s all tied in to Halloween,” he explained.
He goes on to point out how the tradition of costumes originated and why Halloween developed into dark and spooky themes. “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 added: “When you go out on Halloween and see all the 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? They are poking fun at him.”
Historians universally recognize the origins of Halloween as dating back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, in which the ghosts of the dead were said to return to Earth for one night. It wasn’t until over 600 years later that Pope Boniface IV incorporated the pagan festival into the tradition of All Martyrs Day. It is believed that the church created All Saints Day 400 years later in an attempt to replace Samhain.
“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,” Cameron said.
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