Fundamentalist actor Kirk Cameron recently urged Christians to embrace Halloween, arguing that it was a holiday that pagans had tried to steal from them.

In an interview published by The Christian Post on Monday, Cameron explained that the “real origins” of Halloween had to do with a Catholic Church tradition of remembering the dead before All Saints Day.

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“When you go out on Halloween and see all 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?” the actor asked. “They are poking fun at him.”

Cameron observed that mocking President Barack Obama with a Halloween mask was similar to when “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.”

“The costumes poke fun at the fact that the devil and other evils were publicly humiliated by Christ at His resurrection,” he continued. “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.”

But according to Cameron, pagans had tried to claim the Christian holiday for themselves.

“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,” he insisted. “That’s the perspective Christians should have.”

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Historians universally recognize Halloween’s origins 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. And historians believe that the church created the All Saints Day celebration 400 years later in an attempt to replace the festival of Samhain.