Photo Shoot: Boxing Day memories and Kodachrome film
Christmas on Sunday gives many American workers the chance to have Boxing Day as a paid holiday. The old English holiday dates back to a time when servants would have to work Christmas and so the day after, their reward was boxes of gifts from employers, perhaps the 21st century should restart this old tradition.
Growing up, on the rare occasions when Christmas landed on a Sunday, church became a weekend doubleheader for the Heaslip boys, Christmas Eve candlelight service and back again Sunday morning for round two. Dec. 26 in upstate New York was most often snow-covered and the sledding hill across the street was a beehive of activity with new sleds to try out or just unwrapped itchy wool snow pants to break in with a full day spent on toboggans, Flexible Flyer sleds or the popular flying saucers — aluminum discs with a pair of canvas handles that spun in wide circles leading to vertigo at the bottom of the hill.
On the rare occasion of no snow, we would be packed up and headed out to Main Street stores for a round of after- Christmas markdown sales. This was the day to stock up on wrapping paper for next year or other deeply discounted holiday supplies. The year-end photo ritual for my father, the shutterbug, was finishing up the roll of 35 mm Kodachrome in his Kodak Pony 135 camera, circa 1955. This simple viewfinder camera had a flash gun using old two-prong flashbulbs. A roll of slide film was started in late summer, or early fall, and the 24-exposure roll would quite often make it to Christmas. The last frames were rolled back into the canister and placed in a metal film can. Then it was down to the local drug store to be sent out for processing. Kodak was only about 70 miles away in Rochester but it was still about a week before a small yellow box arrived back home.
Boxes upon boxes of slides would pile up, neatly stacked beside an old slide projector. On a slow winter weekend night, the collapsible screen and projector would come out of the closet, popcorn was made and home entertainment at its finest, the family would gather to see ourselves on the big screen. Many times the first run through the projector slides were upside down, backward, or both.
This bygone tradition has given way to giant TV screens, surround sound with non-stop streaming movies to match every mood or taste in entertainment. But honestly, what could be more fun than looking at another box of slides where dad had framed the shot wrong, losing mom’s head in her best holiday smock, smiling down at her eight-month-old’s first Christmas, a long time ago? That is what photography is all about, moments never lost to time.
Contact Steve Heaslip at sheaslip@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cctphoto.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Photo Shoot: Boxing Day memories and Kodachrome film
