By Ryan Thomas
A Christmas Story was always the Christmas movie for me. There are lots of Christmas movies about, presumably, joy and good tidings and the magic of the holidays. There aren’t a lot of Christmas movies about lying, scheming, violent 9-year-old boys and their otherworldly desire for toy guns.
The film, directed by Bob Clark and showing at The Independent Picture House from Dec. 7 to Dec. 10, is a twisted coming-of-age story about disappointment and regret: the first time you get a C+ or cuss in front of your dad or feel cheated by a radio program. Adapted from a collection of short stories by Jean Shepherd — also the film’s narrator — it functions as a memory piece, a series of vignettes that play out in a wintery fog of 1940s Americana.
It’s a bitter and misanthropic movie that’s become a belated holiday classic, filled with vindictive kids, helpless mothers and horny, lamp-obsessed fathers. Which is probably the exact reason A Christmas Story has lived on in the culture. It’s not afraid to show what Christmas can bring out of us, or at least the 9-year-old versions of us: the petty grievances with friends and family and “the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.”
I’m thinking of the scene where Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is heard dropping an f-bomb, then snitches on a friend for basically no reason. Or when he dreams of going blind from soap poisoning to spite his parents. Or when he finally goes berserk on the neighborhood bully, reduced to tears and cussing up a storm just like his dad. Or his anxiety, desperation and, finally, elation over getting the Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot. Few movies, short of the terrible Jingle All the Way, put such an emphasis on the emotional impact of a kid getting (or not getting) a Christmas gift.
But then there’s the sweet, innocent side to A Christmas Story. Like Ralphie’s mom (Melinda Dillon) covering for him with his dad, brushing over Ralphie losing it on the bully. And Ralphie in class fantasizing about literary greatness. And the little brother falling in the snow with all his layers on. And the pink bunny costume. And, after a ruined turkey, Christmas duck dinner at a Chinese restaurant, no other customers in sight, just Mom, Dad, Ralphie and his brother, together and happy for once.
It’s the mixture of naïveté and churlishness that A Christmas Story gets just right. Ralphie’s just a kid, but already an expert cusser. He cries like a baby, but knows a ripoff radio promo when he hears one. And he’s in a world of adolescence that doesn’t exist anymore, where kids are left alone to play with BB guns and get stuck to telephone poles. A Christmas Story reminds me of Christmas, which reminds me of growing up. That’s the power of a great holiday movie and probably the true reason for the season.