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This year marks the 75th anniversary of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a holiday favorite for many.

A Mercer Island pastor, , is a regular speaker at an annual festival in Seneca Falls, New York, which was the model for the movie’s town of Bedford Falls.

He says “It’s a Wonderful Life” emphasizes the value of life.

“If only we knew how one life touches another and what a difference we really have made,” Asimakoupolus said.

Although the film isn’t “obviously” religious, the pastor argues that it is religious in his book,

“I really actually make a case in the book for the fact that Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey is a Christ figure, where he models self-sacrifice, the willingness to give his life on behalf of other people,” he explained.

“Even the scene in Mr. Potter’s office there at the bank where George is tempted to go to work for Potter and is on the verge of giving in, that to me is kind of a parallel picture of Christ in the desert where he’s tempted by Satan,” Asimakoupolus continued.

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As for the movie itself, he says it lifted spirits after years of war.

“Coming out of World War II, it was a feel-good movie that America needed,” Asimakoupolus told Seattle’s Morning News.

But at the time of its release, he says “it kind of was a sleeper — it didn’t earn any Academy Awards that it was nominated for.”

In the 1970s, a clerical mistake prevented the copyright owners from filing a renewal application, prompting the film to get widespread showing, which boosted its popularity.

At the annual festival in upstate New York, Asimakoupolus says all the surviving actors turn out.

“They’re all in their 80s now — the kid actors that were the Bailey kids. They do lectures, they reminisce about what it was like to work with Frank Capra, with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed,” he said.

He says Reed’s daughter often comes to the festival as well.

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