A Christmas Story (1983)

It has been a tradition in my family to kick off the Holiday season by watching A Christmas Story after finishing Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a movie I have seen countless times since my childhood and it still cracks me up, despite the overexposure. The majority of Christmas movies have a fantasy element to them – It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, White Christmas, and Miracle on 34^th Street, to name a few – but A Christmas Story is the most relatable out of the bunch, because it has a fairly simple premise: a boy desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. The only fantasy elements we get in A Christmas Story are Ralphie's day dreams.

A Christmas Story is one of the most accurate depictions of childhood ever put onto film. The children in Christmas movies tend to be wide eyed innocents that don’t possess a single selfish bone in their body; this is not the case with Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story, who behaves like complete shithead at times. After Flick has stuck his tongue to a frozen pole, Ralphie leaves him to freeze in the cold. He doesn’t even bother to inform their teacher, Miss Shields, about Flick’s plight. Later, when Ralphie’s mother wants to know who he heard the f--- word from, instead of ratting out his father, he opts to throw his friend Schwartz under the bus. Yet, despite these acts of cowardice, Ralphie remains a completely sympathetic character – he’s just an awkward kid trying to survive childhood.

 A Christmas Story is a funny movie, but the movie is largely about Ralphie learning to cope with disappointment: He is constantly told, “You’ll shoot your eye out,” by the adults in his life when he reveals he wants a BB gun from Christmas; the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring he gets in the mail turns out to be an advertisement for Ovaltine; he gets a C+ on his Christmas theme, after imagining that it would get him a standing ovation from the class; his crazy aunt makes him a pink bunny costume for Christmas;  the Santa Claus at the department store turns out to be a complete maniac; and he nearly shoots his eye out with the Red Ryder BB gun. Ralphie’s most redeemable quality is his ability to shake off the disappointment and get on with his life. It’s fitting that the movie ends with him sleeping in bed with a smile on his face. 

The Parkers are a fairly interesting family because they are neither a perfect nor dysfunctional family unit that you often see on television. They are a fairly normal family, but like most normal families they have their quirks: the youngest son, Randy, refuses to eat; The Old Man is “one of the most feared furnace fighters in northern Indiana”; Ralphie constantly day dreams; and the mother holds the family together, but isn’t above getting into a petty argument with her husband.  The most famous image from A Christmas Story is the leg lamp that the Old Man wins in a contest. He is completely in awe of his “major award,” while the mother is embarrassed by it. When he suggest they put in by the front window (where all the neighbors can see it), the mother begins to freak out. The leg lamp subplot is not only hilarious, but its denouement shows just what an imaginative director Bob Clark could be; the mother leaves the frame to water the plants and then seconds later we hear an off screen crash. The Old Man emerges from the furnace, wondering what the noise was, only to discover that his precious leg lamp is in pieces. The mother claims it was an accident, but the father suspects foul play.  Was it really an accident? Did the mother do it on purpose? We are never given a clear answer, it is left ambiguous. If A Christmas Story were made today, there would, no doubt, be a shot of the mother knocking over the leg lamp and then giving the audience a wink. She would also be played by a “hot” actress, instead of the natural looking Melinda Dillon.

It is interesting to note that Darren McGavin was in his sixties and Melinda Dillon was in her forties when A Christmas Story was released, which makes them the oldest pair of parents in movie history. Yet, this works greatly in the movie’s favor – the movie is told from Ralphie’s point of view and children tend to view their parents as being old timers. When I was a kid, I thought anyone over the age of thirty was ancient. How times have changed! The great thing about the parents in A Christmas Story is that, despite their squabbles, they still enjoy each other's company – the movie ends with her sitting on his lap in the living room as they watch the snowfall.

This leads me to my final point: What happened to Bob Clark after A Christmas Story? It’s like there are two Bob Clarks; pre-Christmas Story and post-Christmas Story. The pre-Christmas Story Clark made a series of flawed, but interesting movies: Black Christmas is an unsettling precursor to Halloween; Murder by Decree is an eerie Sherlock Holmes thriller; and Porky’s is a better than average sex comedy. His filmography after A Christmas Story is absolutely horrendous; the nadir probably being Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.  His early movies showed a director with great promise, while his later projects make you wonder, “How does this guy keep getting work?” It is an absolute shame. Well, at least he will always have A Christmas Story.

Cast: Melinda Dillon (Mother Parker), Darren McGavin (The Old Man Parker), Peter Billingsley (Ralphie), Ian Petrella (Randy), Scott Schwartz (Flick), Tedde Moore (Miss Shields), R.D. Robb (Schwartz), Zack Ward (Scut Farkus), Yano Anaya (Grover Dill), Jean Shepherd (Ralphie as an adult – voice), Jeff Gillen (Santa Claus).

Director: Bob Clark
Screenplay: Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown, Bob Clark
Running Time: 95 min.