VIDEO FLASHBACK: Covington School Christmas Concert 1984

The camcorders weighed 10 pounds and shot beta, but in 1984 they were considered state-of-the-art and just hitting the market.

Fortunately for us, some proud parent snagged one of the world’s first consumer video cameras and shot footage of holiday concert. In this segment, Covington’s kindergarten and first grade classes rip through the holiday classics—“Jingle Bells,”  “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—dropping red noses and missing cues, all to the thundering applause of their parents and grandparents.

Did you attend or sing in the 1984 Covington School Christmas concert? Tell us in the comments.

And, something you probably wouldn't see at a public school "winter" concert today: little girls dressed as angels kneeling before a manger and holiding a baby doll, while their classmates sing "Away In A Manger."

The singing at the beginning is indicepherable, partly due to the kindergartners trying to play the bells, but the camera pans over a lot of sweet little faces from 27 years ago. The singing becomes clearer as the video continues.

The video belongs to the . If you have home movies on Super 8 with Oak Lawn in the background, or old VHS or Beta video such as the 1984 Covington School Christmas concert, bring it to Kevin Korst, the library’s community historian.

Kevin can transfer it on to DVD and give you a copy and the original back. I’ve seen Kevin at work, and he’s very organized and neat.

The library will also accept and scan old photographs and color slides of Oak Lawn. The only media the library can’t transfer is reel-to-reel audio-tape, but Kevin can tell you where to take it.

Every resident that donates visual media to the library will be credited as the donor and/or photographer. The library has hundreds of photographs donated by Oak Lawn residents from the village’s earliest years to present day available in the community archive.

For more information about donating photos, old home movies and video to the Oak Lawn Library’s Local History Room, contact community historian Kevin Korst.

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