12 Movies of Christmas: A Christmas Story
The sweet agony always started with the opening of the first door on my advent calendar. From that point, countdown had begun and I was like a convict in a prison movie scratching bar gates on the wall of his cell, marking time until the joyous release of Christmas Day itself. Just over three weeks, but it seemed such a dauntingly long time – honestly, there were occasions when I was so overcome with excitement and exhaustion from having to wait that I’d need to take a little lie down on the floor. I simply didn’t know what to do with myself otherwise.
Frustrating though it was, that build-up to the Big Day was also the best time of year. The radio was full of festive tunes as competition heated up to become Christmas Number One. There were carols to sing and a nativity play to prepare for at school as the term wound down towards the holidays. Going gift buying in town was a hectic event with all the stores bustling to bursting point, and I always loved helping mum get in the big grocery shop from Tescos. There were Christmas cards to write, trees to festoon with baubles and tinsel, decorations to hang, and the Christmas edition of the Radio Times to mark up with all the movies and shows we wanted to watch. Throughout it all, there was the unceasing dream that we might even get a white Christmas – although that’s something that almost never happens in the UK.
Out of all the festive movies I’ve seen over the years, it is Canadian Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story that captures this sense of anticipation from a kid’s-eye perspective better than anything else. Based on the semi-autobiographical anecdotes of humourist Jean Shepherd (who co-wrote the screenplay with Clark and Leigh Brown), it’s less of a story and more of a nostalgic experience, introducing us to crafty nine-year-old Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) and his family as they count down the days to Christmas somewhere in the late ‘30s to early ‘40s (although there are conflicting dates shown in the movie, Clark and Shepherd intended the year to be non-specific).
All Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun and, in the way of nine-year-old boys everywhere, he simply can’t imagine how life will go on if he doesn’t get one. Unfortunately, his mum (Melinda Dillon) isn’t so keen on the idea, telling him “you’ll shoot your eye out,” and just about every other adult in his life has the same opinion.
The Parkers are a typical modest lower-middle-class American family from the period. Mother stays at home taking care of Ralphie and his kid brother Randy (Ian Petrella) and cooking thrifty meals ready for dinner when the Old Man (Darren McGavin) returns home from work every evening. She’s a little careworn and strict when she needs to be, but otherwise sweet-natured and attentive. He’s grumpy but kind-hearted, and family life has replaced much in the way of romance between them – all he wants after a hard day’s work is to eat his meal and read the funnies. But they seem content enough, muddling along and making the most of small victories - one of the film’s comic highlights involves the Old Man winning a ridiculously tacky lamp made from a sexy female mannequin leg as a “major prize” in a newspaper competition.
Ralphie’s quest to persuade his parents to get him a BB gun is the through-line that connects a series of vignettes. Pre-figuring a similar scene in Dumb and Dumber, we have one of Ralphie’s school pals accepting a “triple-dog dare” and getting his tongue stuck to a frozen pole. There are skirmishes with the fearsome bully Scut Farkus (Zack Ward), and Ralphie is punished for dropping the F-bomb in the good old-fashioned way. Later, there is an unnerving encounter with a surly department store Santa and his equally rude little helpers before we get to the Big Day. Will Ralphie get his heart’s desire, and, if so, will he manage to keep both his peepers intact?
With Shepherd delivering wry asides and ironic exaggeration on the voice-over, A Christmas Story is rich in tiny details and observational humour that feel authentic in their specificity. Shepherd also had a knack for spinning a yarn and, together with Clark’s observational style, the film really gives us a feeling for why each of these relatively mundane incidents are big events in Ralphie’s young life. Indeed, to put us in his shoes even further, Clark had holes cut in the floor of the set so the camera could be positioned at Ralphie’s eye level.
Bob Clark has the unusual distinction of directing both the greatest festive horror movie of all time (Black Christmas) and A Christmas Story, which has since become one of America’s most beloved family holiday films. He had the idea for the latter at the beginning of his career when he heard Shepherd on the radio telling the tale that would become the infamous frozen tongue incident in the movie.
Shepherd’s folksy stories became well-known on the radio from the 1950s through to the early ‘70s in America. He enjoyed such success with them that several were published in Playboy magazine before appearing in a best-selling collection called In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. As his celebrity grew, Shepherd even performed the tales as monologues at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Even with Shepherd’s popularity in the States, it still took Bob Clark a long while to build the cachet to get A Christmas Story greenlit. Ultimately, it required something rather less family-friendly to give him the leverage he required: His raunchy teen comedy Porky’s became one of the surprise hits of 1981, taking home $160 million against a $5 million budget.
That was enough for Clark to persuade MGM to stump up the cash, and he might have had a bigger star, too. The studio wanted Jack Nicholson to play the Old Man, despite the reservations of Clark and Shepherd. Nicholson was too expensive, however, and it turned out well for all parties. Jack went on to score an Oscar nomination for Terms of Endearment instead (released five days after A Christmas Story) and Clark felt eternally grateful that he landed Darren McGavin in the role.
It’s hard to imagine A Christmas Story being anywhere near the same movie with Nicholson involved, and his star power would’ve surely capsized the entire family dynamic. The casting is perfect just the way it is. The focus remains firmly on Ralphie (although it took me a few viewings to warm to his character) and the understated rapport between McGavin and two-time Oscar nominee Dillon is just wonderful. I love that quiet little scene towards the end of the film when they finally get a second to relax together without the kids around. She seems quite a bit younger than the Old Man and it’s one of the few times they show affection towards each other all movie, but their entire relationship makes sense in that moment.
Roger Ebert speculated in his review for A Christmas Story: “My guess is either nobody will go to see it, or millions of people will go to see it.” He was almost exactly right, but even he couldn’t predict the film’s longevity.
Released on November 18th 1983, the film made a little money but had largely vanished from most theatres come Christmas that year. It was your classic sleeper hit, gradually accumulating around $19 million (from a $3.3 million budget) with a re-release in December 1984. Like It’s a Wonderful Life before it, however, it was cable TV that made Clark’s movie the treasure it is today.
The ailing MGM sold its library of films to TNT (Turner Network Television) in 1986, and founder Ted Turner ran A Christmas Story annually, something that helped make the movie part of the fabric of the holiday season for millions of families. When TNT merged with Time Warner in 1997, it became even more of a festive event – from that year onward, TNT (and sister channel TBS from 2004) screened the much-hyped 24-hour marathon with the film showing non-stop from Christmas Eve evening and running most of the way through Christmas Day. If you really want to do the whole shebang, you can even watch the marathon while staying in the actual A Christmas Story house in Cleveland – although be warned, it’s not cheap!
So why is A Christmas Story such an enduringly popular festive movie? I have to admit that I don’t like all the humour in the movie, and I find the dream sequences and some of Shepherd’s drolleries a little cringey. What draws me back is relatability. Although it is obviously a very different kind of film to Black Christmas, Clark takes a similar approach in both movies, stripping away much of the seasonal schmaltz, opting for a darker palette than most Hollywood holiday fare, and depicting Christmas as most of us really encounter it: A little hectic and cynical and rough around the edges, but something we look forward to and cherish anyway.
Despite being set almost 40 years before I was born, this feels very much like the Christmases that my sister and I knew as kids. This is not the McAllisters from Home Alone in their immaculate mansion in the suburbs. Like the Parkers, our parents were hard working but didn’t always have that much money to spare, yet they always did their best to make sure we didn’t miss out on anything we wanted come the Big Day.
You know by the end of A Christmas Story that every present under the Parker’s gaudily-decorated tree was budgeted and deliberated over by Mrs. Parker and the Old Man. They may well have had to put aside some of their own personal little luxuries to afford it, just as my parents did. It’s a movie that understands the hard graft and the love behind the act of gift-giving at Christmas for many ordinary families, something which makes Ralphie’s surprise last present feel all the more triumphant.
