It’s funny: when it came out on Thanksgiving weekend in 1983, A Christmas Story was met with great ambivalence. Making a modest $2 million dollars in its first week and closing with under $20 million and disappearing from most theaters before Christmas. Critics were mixed: Leonard Maltin called it an instant classic, where others panned the movie as an empty, saccharine treat.
It seems like A Christmas Story was on track to be another forgotten holiday movie when the burgeoning cable television industry picked up the film. First aired near the Thanksgiving holiday by HBO, TBS, and WGN, it was in 1997 that TNT decided to air the program in a 24-hour marathon. It’s hard to say if the program’s enduring success was due to the marathon or if the marathon was product of the movie’s growing fan base. Regardless of how it happened, A Christmas Story is now a beloved American icon.
Telling the story of Ralphie and his family in a non-descript Midwestern town, A Christmas Story is like a twisted version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Sure, all the parts are there: Sitting on Santa’s lap. Sitting in a classroom, dreaming of Christmas. Waking up on Christmas morning. But writer Jean Shepherd and director Bob Cole take the familiar and twist it with a brilliant device: The active imagination of a child.
A Christmas Story is narrated by a grown-up Ralphie who relishes in reminiscing about the mischief he got into as a child. A series of vignettes on the Christmas theme, structurally A Christmas Story is remarkably similar to Christmas Vacation: Instead of being from the perspective of a jaded adult trying to recapture his youth it is about a child reveling in the spirit of the season. Resultantly the movie reveals a connection we all have to our inner child and appeals to a shared set of memories.
As heartwarming as it is twisted, A Christmas Story has something that will appeal to everyone. From Ralphie’s disillusionment of Santa and his desire (and machinations to acquire) a dangerous gift to his battles with bullies and the stories that become legend (like the boy whose tongue got stuck to a metal pole), the movie hits on dozens of points that are familiar to any child growing up. The total package is a wonderful bit of nostalgia and a hilarious comedy in its own right.
