Christmas movie nights can still happen in COVID-19 times and a Nanaimo family is taking that even further, re-enacting holiday classics with their young son.
Todd Cameron and his wife Nicole have been dressing up their son Jack as characters from cinematic and TV movies, photographing him and posting the images on social media. Cameron said he drew inspiration from a Christmas comedy.
“I’d seen an ad for Elf, which I’ve seen many times … I thought it’d be great to see our son wearing a getup like that,” he said. “That spurred on an idea to do as many characters as we could for the season and we ended up with 12 classic movie characters and crafted the costumes and my wife did the photography and [we] had fun trying to get a one-year-old to make some poses and facial expressions. He did really well actually.”
Along with Will Ferrell’s Buddy character, the Camerons cosplayed Jack as characters from Die Hard, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, Gremlins, Bad Santa, Jingle All the Way and Love Actually.
Cameron said his son didn’t really understand what was happening, but the results were priceless.
“We just put him in a bunch of crazy outfits and scenarios and put him around some props and just hoped for the best. To be honest, he did some really great facial expressions for some of them,” Cameron said. “For the Kevin McCallister from Home Alone, he’s got a mischievous grin and for the Clark Griswold one, he saw our Christmas lights for the first time … he kind of gave this big wide-eyed expression, which worked out really well. For the Die Hard one, we just kept throwing a candy cane into this big cardboard tin-foil vent I made and he kept crawling in there.”
Pandemic restrictions are in place for the holidays and Cameron hopes the pictures make people smile.
“It’s more important this year than other years,” said Cameron. “I know we’re not going to be able to see our family, so for our family to get these kind of pictures and see Jack in these scenarios, and also just for other people that have been sharing or commenting on the photos online, they seem to be extra thankful that we’re sharing some of our Christmas joy with them.”
Some don’t consider Die Hard a Christmas movie, but Cameron will hear none of that.
“There’s Christmas references throughout it. It happens on Christmas, there’s Christmas music and there’s a great happy ending, so I don’t think you need any more than that, really,” said Cameron.
To view the photos, go here.
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