A Christmas Story (1983)
A Christmas Story is the ultimate Christmas movie because it is one hundred percent honest. There are Christmas season movies out there that concern themselves with faith, family, the spirit of giving, learning to let go, learning to accept, finding a light within yourself that you didn’t realize that you needed, Nakatomi Plaza, Bedford Falls, Whoville, Rockefeller Center, Connecticut, the Cratchit house… That is the ethereal, touch-feely, spiritual sense of the religious holiday that has been around for millennia. A Christmas Story is about Christmas as Americans and the Western world know it.
It's about presents.
Particularly, it’s about kids asking for something for Christmas. I have lived through both sides of this, once as a kid, and once having kids. I can safely say there is nothing better our world has to offer than those things. I don’t want to watch your kids’ school production of ’Grease’ or their piano recital. But I will watch any kids open gifts on Christmas morning. It pains me that I can’t see that anymore. But Ralphie gets to remind me every year how crazy and wonderful that tradition really is.
It is commercial. It can be greedy and crass. But it is part of our culture, everyone. An enviable part. I choose to love it as it is.
Ralphie wants a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. That’s it. That’s the plot. The movie takes place in the late 1940’s Indiana. (Cleveland in reality). No TV yet. Kids are still second class, seen and not heard. Teenagers aren’t a market to be sold to just yet. Kids are just kids, and they are into stupid shit. Ralphie’s only job is to go to school and avoid bullies. He knows the BB gun is a long shot to get under the tree, so he tries to persuade his parents, his teacher, and eventually Santa at the department store. His parents are Midwest weirdos but as loving and as attentive as you could be back then. Christmas comes. At first, he thinks he didn’t get his BB gun, but his father (The Old Man) took it upon himself to give him one because he had one when he was Ralphie’s age. You know why Ralphie got the gift? Because he is a kid at Christmas.
I’m not sure it gets more American than that. This movie is mom and apple pie. You got your commercialism, your hard-working middle-class Americans. Children getting the shit kicked out of them for swearing. There’s even a gun in it for gun freaks.
What A Christmas Story captures is the season. The anticipation. The nervousness and hope. It’s a child’s version of a miracle. I had it kinda shitty back in the 1980s, but my parents got it together around the holidays. My Red Rider BB gun was an original Atari 2600 for me and my brother. (Now that is an 80s gift.) We freaked the fuck out. I’m still shocked we got it. We played with moving squares and triangles for years.
My best holiday memories are the lack of sleep, the chatting with my brother about what we asked for Christmases past. Christmas had more of a punch back then, too. We didn’t get toys during the year. Maybe something on a birthday. All the fun and sweets and kid stuff was reserved for the holidays. I still say, for better or worse, America only started caring about children in any serious respect or around 1992 or so. Until then it was strictly an adult’s world and you had to find the little bits and pieces within it that a kid would enjoy.
I still love It’s a Wonderful Life the best. It made more of an impact on life my than I’d like to admit. But I could relate to Ralphie. Strangely, I didn’t care for A Christmas Story as much as a kid. It was when I watched it with my kids that I truly appreciated it. It’s a comedy and TBS plays it on Christmas Eve. When it was over it was time to put my little ones to bed and sense their anticipation.
I can feel that, right now, as I type these words.
Is there anything better?