What’s your favorite Christmas movie? It’s a Wonderful Life? Home Alone? Christmas Vacation? Elf? Miracle on 34th Street?
I’ve recently discovered that I have several Christmas movies that are all “my favorite.” They have many similarities. They’re all grainy, sometimes out of focus, and completely silent. They were all shot on Super 8 film in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. The movies’ producers, directors, and photographers were my mom and dad.
My family recently decided to watch old home movies again, but we didn’t have to break out the film projector. I had hundreds of those tiny Super 8 reels transferred to DVDs a few years ago. We hit the play button, and the very first Christmas video we enjoyed was from 1969. My older sister was just two years old, grinning at the camera with ribbons in her hair, sitting next to a tree covered with tinsel. I thought, “Her face hasn’t changed in 51 years!”
The next movie shows me as a baby, wiggling on the ground by the tree. A couple years later, my sister and I can be seen bounding around the corner, diving into the gifts. My dad pans over to my mom, who has to lay down and watch from the couch because she’s exhausted from a long night of assembling bicycles and doll houses. I get teary-eyed thinking about how much my parents went all out for Christmas, year after year.
Then we see the Christmas when my Mamaw opened a beautifully-wrapped gift from my Papaw, only to become seriously annoyed when she realized it was a brand new pair of shoes… for him. He laughed. She didn’t. We couldn’t help but giggle as the film rolled on.
Movie after movie, the memories fill my soul with love. There we are, having a wrapping paper tube ‘sword fight’ with my dad. There’s my mom, modeling her new coat. There’s my dad, trying to get a toy airplane off the ground while I’m jumping all around him with anticipation. There’s the massive Christmas dinner my mom always engineered to perfection. I’m pausing the video every ten seconds to take a photo with my smartphone. I’ll keep those pictures forever.
At the end of our movie marathon, we said a prayer. “Thank you, God, for giving us these beautiful moments over all these years. We are forever grateful.”
There was one more precious sight caught on video. Our nativity scene that is older than me. We still have it. It continues to remind us of the reason for the season. Jesus Christ, the Light of the world, gave us the ultimate Christmas gift. It’s my favorite story of all time. Sure, His birth wasn’t captured on film… but the book is better anyway.
– Ed Doney, St. Luke’s Writer/Videographer
