Tuesday, January 15, 2013

He Comes Down Your Chimney To Steal Your Soul

During the holidays some of you may have seen the videos I shared on Facebook of the Christmas Pentecast. If you haven't watched them, you can find them below.

The host of the pentecast - the Rev. Brother Marshall - is a satirical character created by my friend Dan. Brother Marshall is an exceptionally clueless Pentecostal preacher who thinks very highly of himself. In these videos, he takes it upon himself to warn us of the dangers of Santa Claus, who is supposedly a direct agent of Satan ("the spellin' is almost the same!"). Brother Marshall's Scriptural exegesis is atrocious and he sees a demon behind every bush. He tries to sound knowledgeable by adding unnecessary technical suffixes to his words (i.e., -cation and -ism), and defends his beliefs through meaningless non-sequiturs, irrelevant Scripture verses, and appeals to personal revelation.


Brother Marshall calls his Internet program a "pentecast" because he is a Pentecostal making a podcast. This is also why he calls the messages he receives "pentegrams," which he doesn't seem to realize is a homonym for pentagram, a symbol popularly associated with Satanism and the occult.

If you happen to be a Pentecostal I hope you aren't offended by these. All the Pentecostals I know who have seen these videos have enjoyed them - and probably more so than others since they have more personal experience with what is being satirized (i.e., "and that is the birth of Jesus...in ACTS 2:38!"). The first video is just of Brother Marshall, but in the second and third videos I join him for a debate regarding Santa Claus, the Trinity, Bible translations, etc.

To be honest, I'm amazed by my friend's ability to slip into this character. The majority of all three videos is entirely improvised. This wasn't hard for me, because I was pretty much just playing myself. Not so for Dan, though. He had to suspend his natural sense of logic and find ways to outmaneuver my rationality. All I had to do was try my best not to laugh.

Props to my friend Matt Guastamacchio, as the pentecast is in large part his brainchild. He edited a ton of footage to try and make what we had as funny as possible.

The Pentecast Christmas Sermon (and Q&A)

The Pentecast Christmas Debate: Part 1

The Pentecast Christmas Debate: Part 2

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