Local pastor spreads holiday cheer in viral 'Christmas in Columbus' music video
Christmas in Columbus may not be a snowy winter wonderland, but it can still be a pretty nice holiday down south. Now a local pastor and his friends have created a festive musical tribute to the Fountain City that's gone viral on Facebook.
The video, "Christmas in Columbus," shows Justin Gaston along with three friends, Ethan Lamb, Will Oliver and Clayton Shirley, rapping about Christmas down in Columbus while dancing through different landmarks across the city.
The video, posted Sunday night, has now been viewed more than 50,000 times and has more than 250 comments.
"Columbus is the second largest city in the state of Georgia. It's about time we got some representation in the music scene," Gaston wrote when he posted the video.
It looks like he's on the way to getting his wish. But how did the video come to be?
"I've always done creative stuff, I've always done churches for churches, friends, and stuff like that," said Gaston, a Columbus local who graduated from Harris County High School and briefly attended Columbus State University. He's now a pastor at North Highland Church.
In college, he created a YouTube channel where he's begun posting regular videos. That got him thinking about making a holiday music video for Columbus, he said.
"There were two reasons I wanted to make the video. One, I wanted to share joy and make people smile. Two, I just want to get better at making videos," he said. "The dream is to have an audience of people, a platform where people can come to just be happy, even for just four minute video."
The video was conceived, written, planned, shot, uploaded and shared all within a week. Ethan Lamb was the musical mind behind the video, and made the beat for the song. Will Oliver was the other rapper and Clayton Shirley appears as Santa Claus. The group had the beat done on Monday, wrote the song Tuesday, mastered the track on Wednesday, planned the video on Thursday, and then shot and edited the whole thing over the weekend.
"We honestly thought this was going to get like 5,000 or 10,00 views. But I went to sleep and woke up and it was already at 17,000," Gaston said.
He said he made the video because he really does love the city and wanted to use the song to "lift" Columbus before the holidays.
"It was intentional to be positive ... and to make an anthem of sorts. I wanted the city of Columbus to see it," he said. "Honestly, I do love Columbus. I just moved from Miami, and Miami has tons to do, but I really do love Columbus as well."
So what's the plan for Gaston and his musical crew now that he's found some local success? He's got a lot of things to do, including his job as a pastor and as a member of the communication firm Wildside Creative Co. But he says there are some ideas being kicked around.
"Nothing is concrete, but (the other guys) were like 'We can never just not make a music video again,'" said Gaston. He did tease one more song idea for the future.
"Valentine's Day is coming up."
This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Local pastor spreads holiday cheer in viral 'Christmas in Columbus' music video."