Kirk Cameron's "Saving Christmas"

          According to the trailer, “Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas” is about Kirk Cameron helping his unironically-named brother-in-law Christian (definitely not a “Pilgrim’s Progress”-type metaphor at all) rediscover the true meaning of Christmas. The trailer starts off with a bang – “I’m setting out to recover the TRUE meaning of Christmas, not this “Happy Holidays” nonsense!” which is funny because it tends to be the same kind of people that whine about how Christian Holidays Matter, but can’t understand why Black Lives Matter is not racist.  All Winter Holidays Matter, yo. The movie looks ludicrously bad, and it IS ludicrously bad – it received an actual 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, causing Kirk Cameron to beg his 17 fans to leave positive reviews, to “tell Rotten Tomatoes that WE decide what media is good and what is bad!” Hilariously, his dumb plan backfired when godless atheists stormed Rotten Tomatoes to further drag his film.

          Normally, I wouldn’t even bother watching a film that is so ludicrously bad. But I truly dislike Kirk Cameron and everything that he stands for, and I truly enjoy hate-watching things, mostly because it allows me to feel morally superior, and I love feeling that way. So here we go:

1.       Starting off with Kirk Cameron sitting in his color-coordinated living room with perfectly matching stockings on the mantel telling us about everything he loves about Christmas. “There’s something about Christmas that makes people more kind, that makes them bring people out of the cold – help them, feed them, clothe them.” Ok, but if you’re only doing that at Christmas, and not at other times of the year, you’re not actually that great of a person. Also – color-coordinated living rooms with perfectly matching stockings is just so bland-ola. Stockings should be made with love by your grandmother or something, not purchased at a store. Also, color-coordination is boring – the best Christmas trees are filled with ornaments that tell a story (“I got this one at this place, or this person gave me this at this occasion”). And when you decorate a tree, you can't have any particular idea in mind - you just open up all your boxes of ornaments, and start putting them on the tree, and when the boxes are empty, that's when you're done decorating. One year, my sisters and I DID actually impose a rule of "no paper ornaments" because we had a bunch of toilet paper tube nativities from like, a program at the library or something, because we were like, 7, and we thought we were too cool for such childish things. 

2.       “There’s a group of people out there that says ‘Christmas is fine, whatever, you do your thing, and sing your hymns, whatever, but just keep it to ya damn self, and don’t let it spill out into the public sphere.’” He’s talking about atheists, who are sinkholes of happiness and good cheer, and who are categorically incapable of having a good time during the holiday season due to their constant Satan-frowns. Or actually, maybe Jews, or Muslims, who also have winter holidays, and are probably sort of annoyed when everyone brays “MERRY CHRISTMAS” every time they try to legitimately wish someone an all-inclusive, wintertime greeting.

3.       Oh god it’s sponsored by Liberty University. What else could you possibly need to know about the awfulness of this film? Oh, if you needed another reason to despise it, the opening credits are kicky drum-solos of popular Christmas hymns. Yuck. Christmas hymns are the best, and so much better than the "Alvin and the Chipmunks Do Christmas Carols" that have been piped through my doc's office this past week. And now they ruined them.

4.       Unironically-Named Caricature hates Christmas because it represents fakeness and greed and consumerism and poor stewardship and pagan symbols. Honestly, bro, I feel ya. Except for the paganism thing, whatever, I don’t care.

5.       Unironically-Named Caricature just needs to go introvert in his car for awhile, because noisy, busy, parties full of people can be overwhelming for us introverts. Naturally, Kirk Cameron doesn’t understand that someone might have a different way of doing things than he does, so he goes out to invade someone else’s introvert-space, because Kirk Cameron, and also #Rude.

6.       Unironically-Named Caricature is mad because he buys his nieces and nephews gifts that they play with for 3 weeks, and “how many kids could we have fed, and how many wells could we have dug?” Right on, my man.

7.       Oh, Unironically-Named Caricature is “all wrong, about everything, and drank the Christmas Kool-aid?” Really, Kirk Cameron, canNOT wait to hear this one, mostly because no one serves Kool-aid at Christmas; that is just disgusting.

8.        “If you had to pick one most precious decoration, out of all the decorations in your house, I bet it would be your nativity set.” I was going to write a scathing response about how that’s not true, but I forgot that my parents had a tradition of giving us a new Christmas ornament every year growing up, for our future tree, once we moved out; and our very first ornament was a little nativity set. Mine is cheap and plastic, with silver glitter on the roof, but I guess if I had to choose an ornament, it would probably be that one, because I am a sucker for sentimental value. Either that or the porcelain angel ornament that my kindergarten teacher's aide gave all of us. I dropped her a lot when I was a kid, and her wings are a mess of JB Weld and Krazy Glue.

9.        “The nativity is important because of the baby. And the baby is important because of the story he enters into.” What’s that story? The systemic persecution of a people group by a majority people group, and the eventual rise of a messiah figure that gave hope to the masses and inspired social revolutions for thousands of years later? That story, right?

10.   Not that story, apparently. Must be a different Jesus.

11.   Omg did he just say that Jesus was born at a time when boy babies were killed for being boy babies? He did. That didn’t happen until Jesus was at least 2 years old, get your story straight, Kirk Cameron, gosh, you can’t just start throwing Wise Men and shepherds and Mary and Joseph and Jesus and Herod’s soldiers all in the same timeline, it literally just did not happen.

12.   Caricatured Black Characters start spittin’ rhymes about Christmas and how they’re so oppressed for being forced to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and I just feel like Caricatured Black Characters are just here to provide comic relief, because basically all Black characters, especially in Bad Christian Media fall into either “Wise Black Man/Woman” or “Comic Relief.”

13.   Unironically-Named Caricature hates Christmas trees because they are a “pagan-idol-symbol-worshipping-thing,” and Christmas trees are the best, and they smell so great, especially if you chop them down from your neighbor’s pasture with your dad, so just shut up. On a side note, this one time, my dad was on a work trip for John Deere or something, and it was a week before Christmas, and we needed a tree. So Mom crammed us all into our hand-me-down snow gear from our cousins, and we grabbed a hacksaw and our Flyer sled and headed to our windbreak, where several juniper trees had been planted for the express purpose of being cut down later, after the slower-growing trees had filled in. I was like, maybe 12, and my sisters were 10 and 7 or so, idk. Young’uns. We found a tree, and my middle sister went to town on it with the hacksaw, like a champ. We got it cut down, and loaded it onto the sled, on the assumption that it would be easier to drag through the pasture. It wasn’t, because it was windy as all hell, because #Kansas, and the stupid tree kept blowing off the sled. So we each stood on one side of it to stabilize, and Mom pulled the sled, and we managed to drag the dumb thing through about a foot of snow and prairie grass, back to the porch to wait until Dad got home that night. We decided to stand it up in an ice cream bucket of water so it wouldn’t get thirsty. I believe this was my bright idea. Well, long story shorter, it was windy, the tree blew over, the ice cream bucket full of water blew over, and the tree froze to the floor of our porch and we had to individually cut each branch free so we could drag it into the house. And that’s the story of the best Christmas tree gathering mission. See, the secret to a great Christmas tree is that you can’t care what color it is, or if it has a flat side, or even if it's so sparse that you can see clear through it to the other side! A flat side is great, because you can get it closer to the wall and it won’t take up so much of your living room square footage. And color doesn’t matter once you layer it up with lights and beads and Christmas ornaments. And sparseness just guarantees that you have more space to hang all of your ornaments! And most importantly, all great Christmas trees come from pastures, and not from tree lots, and ESPECIALLY not plastic and from a box. That is just heresy.

This is the tree at my parents' house last year -
what a proper Christmas tree looks like. 

14.   Kirk Cameron argues that Christmas trees are not pagan symbols because God made trees and placed them in the Garden of Eden; and also that Christmas should be celebrated in the winter because it symbolizes the turn from cold, dark, death to life and light and springtime. Okkkkkk I have literally never heard any of this nonsense in my life, and I have heard a lot of nonsense in my life; and I just feel like Kirk Cameron is pulling this out of his backside.

15.   “Adam stole a fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and what happens when you steal something? You have to put it back. But Adam couldn’t do that, he already ate the fruit. So Jesus, as the Last Adam, put himself on the tree as God’s most righteous fruit, and that’s why we hang ornaments on a Christmas tree, which symbolizes Jesus hanging on the cross.” Son, you are reaching so hard right now, Jesus is spinning in his grave. Or, he would, if hadn’t been bodily resurrected and beamed back up to heaven. This is why non-Christians think we’re weirdos.

16.   Unironically-Named Caricature is just so blown away by this weird interpretation of Christmas that literally no one in their lives has ever heard before. He’s speechless. So am I, buddy. Probably not for the same reasons.

17.   “Santa has obliterated Jesus! Jesus is gone, kids just want to take pictures with Santa Clause! And you know what? S-A-N-T-A, rearrange the letters? SATAN. Same letters. Coincidence?” Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, what? In other news, I never believed in Santa - my parents never really pushed the narrative, and I guess none of us possessed the suspension of disbelief necessary to seriously imagine that he was real. We also hung our stockings on the banister instead of the mantel that we don't have, so I'm sure that didn't help. My little sister also once told kids in kindergarten that they could only play with her on the playground if they didn't believe in Santa. She's harsh, even at such a tender age. I don't recall how my parents handled that one.

18.   “Santa rewards the good kids, and punishes the bad, who else does that? God.” “Ok, but last I checked, #SavedByGrace. This is like a carjacking of our religion! Christmas is gone, it’s all about Santa now! Read the Bible, it’s in the Bible, flip-flip-flip. You can’t tell me that Santa Claus is in the Bible, what, is it in Third Corinthians?” This guy is like Donald Trump, I swear, just stream-of-consciousness nonsense, and interrupting Kirk Cameron (which is fine, because Kirk Cameron doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say), and just straight-up babbling until he eventually runs out of steam. Also, it’s Three Corinthians, thanks.

19.   Santa Claus is not Satan Claus because he fought for the deity of Christ at the Council of Nicea, and yeah, I mean, I guess that’s true. Apparently he also slapped someone across the face, which is a really interesting way to defend Christ. “It was not the time to stay silent for the sake of being politically correct.” Shut up, Kirk Cameron, seriously, that’s not how being PC works.

20.   Unironically-Named Caricature is tooooooootally blown away by Kirk Cameron’s flawwwwwwless spinning of Christmas, and now he’s soooooooo excited about Christmas, despite the fact that Kirk Cameron never actually answered any of his questions about “how many kids could we feed, how many wells could we dig?”

21.   OMG HE IS SO PUMPED UP ABOUT SAVING CHRISTMAS NOW THAT KIRK CAMERON PUMPED HIM UP WITH DUBIOUS NONSENSE ABOUT CHRISTMAS TREES AND SATAN CLAUS.

22.   “Imagine the presents like a city skyline, like the New Jerusalem, with a tree in the middle of the city, a healing tree, with lights that shine in the darkness over the city, the stars over Bethlehem.” Dude. What.

23.   Kirk Cameron stands in the open doorway, letting cold air in, and no one minds this wanton waste of electricity, because #JesusOrSomeShit

24.   OMG he’s STILL standing in the doorway, it’s been like 10 minutes, what, do you people burn money for fun on a slow Friday night?!?

25.   “Remember those soldiers at the nativity, the ones that didn’t actually exist, because I literally combined several Bible stories into one and then said it with confidence, so people believed me? Yeah, so when you see soldiers at Christmas, think of that.” What.

26.   Wow, these people have two industrial-sized refrigerators, side-by-side, maybe they actually DO burn money for fun on a slow Friday night.

27.   Unironically-Named Caricature apologizes to his wife for being a jerk, and then gets his Black Caricature Friend to deejay a hip-hop dance-off to a hip-hop version of “Angels We Have Heard On High,” because Kirk Cameron. The hip-hop dance-off is mostly (entirely) white people, because of course it is.

28.   No word on whether or not Kirk Cameron finally ever even heard of… closing the __-damn door. He clearly does not have a sense of poise and rationality.

29.   “Don’t buy into the complaint of materialism at Christmas!” Ok, but like, that’s a very valid concern, you Trickle-Down-Economic.

30.   The movie ends with Kirk Cameron winking at Unironically-Named Caricature over a wineglass, and you just know that their relationship only gets weirder in the Easter sequel.

          Well, sorry that this post is less “empirically speaking, this is why this is a Bad Christian Film,” and more a long post about Christmas traditions in the Unruh family. Hope that wasn’t a huge letdown for anyone who actually wanted to read a nuanced critique. It was just too bad. There was too much wrong with it. I couldn’t do it.

          In short, I can aaaaabsolutely see why “Rotten Tomatoes” gave this a 0%. Like, I don’t even know where to start with this. Between Kirk Cameron literally pulling nonsense out of his backside, to Kirk Cameron literally pulling nonsense out of his backside, to Kirk Cameron not actually answering Unironically-Named Caricature’s legitimate questions about stewardship of resources, I just don’t even know. Like, I expected this movie to be bad, because Kirk Cameron, but this is a whole new level of SOOOOOOO INCOHERENTLY BAAAAAAAAAAD. There wasn’t even a plot, it was just Kirk Cameron rudely interrupting some dude’s legitimate car-interoverting! And then Kirk Cameron just HAPPENED to have ALL of these AMAZING and NEVER-BEFORE-HEARD spins on modern-day Christmas, and then everyone was happy at the end. I just don’t even know. The 2 hours I spent watching this and typing it up? I can never get that back.