Lights. Camera. Action!

My sister and I knew the drill by now: come home from the Christmas Eve service, take off our winter coats, wash our hands and wait in the hallway until our father got his camera set up and gave us our cue.

Then we would enter the living room wearing our festive best and run to the Christmas tree to see what Santa had left us while we’d been at church. My father would film us as we opened and admired our new gifts. After a few minutes, he would turn off the camera and then the lights. The living room would darken from “high noon” to normal “night-time” lighting and the temperature in the room would drop several degrees in just seconds. Such are some of the strongest impressions from my childhood Christmases.

The ritual of unwrapping would continue. Once all the gifts under the tree had been discovered, it was on to the numerous parcels that had arrived from our grandmothers in Europe. The lights and camera would come to life again as we tore open the boxes of gifts – no mean feat, given they had heavily knotted string on the outside, then a layer of brown paper, followed by an inner layer of orange-coloured oil paper to keep the items inside from getting damp on their trans-Atlantic voyage via ship. My father would later spend considerable time unknotting that string and saving it for a rainy day – so just cutting off the string was never permitted!

Unlike my friends, we always opened our gifts on the evening of Christmas Eve, following the tradition of our northern European Lutheran heritage. One benefit of this timing was that it allowed my parents to sleep in on Christmas morning rather than being woken up at some indecently early hour by overexcited small children clamouring to see what Santa had left for them overnight. As luck would have it, my husband was also of northern European Lutheran stock and accustomed to the same tradition, so he and I also blissfully slept in on Christmas mornings (as much as any parent with small children can!).

Of course, our tradition of opening our gifts before bed on Christmas Eve evening presented a certain, ah, logistical challenge for my parents. I finally figured out “Santa’s secret” one year when my father overplayed his hand: my sister and I were sitting in the backseat of the car, while my father waited impatiently for my mother to emerge from the house in order for us to drive to church. “Oh, those women! They take so long to put on their makeup and get ready,” he complained. As the time in the cold car dragged on, he said this once too often … and I was on to him – and the mystery of how the gifts got under the tree! Then again, I was 11 and it was high time!! I immediately got on board to preserve my little sister’s innocence – although, in retrospect, I realize she had probably figured it out long before I had.

But back to the home movies. It was always a special treat when the developed film arrived a few weeks (or months!) later and we could relive our Christmas past – no instant gratification in those days! After watching the reels of film, my sister and I would beg my father to run the film projector in reverse and we would laugh uproariously as we watched ourselves un-unwrapping the gifts and doing up the strings on the parcels.

Such simple and innocent pleasures from a bygone era before everything was an Instagram moment and gifts didn’t arrive in Amazon boxes. This year, when we are being cautioned to minimize gathering with relatives and friends in our more traditional ways, I plan to watch those films (now on DVD) and page through some old photo albums to feel the warmth of family in my heart. Perhaps you will do the same?

NOTE: An edited version of this essay was published in the December 2020 edition of Neighbours of Windfields magazine. Click here to read it.