From the mundane — magic: 'A Christmas Story' turns 40

Cabbage, blown fuses, bad furnaces, broken eyeglasses. That — surely — isn't the stuff of which holiday classics are made.

Angels, ghosts, miracles and nasally challenged reindeer. That's a Christmas movie. Unless it's the most beloved one of all — celebrating its 40th anniversary Nov. 18.

"A Christmas Story" stands out from the pack in that it deals, not with the miraculous, but with the mundane. That's the special gift of Jean Shepherd, the maverick humorist who was the unlikely source of everyone's favorite holiday film.

"So much of Jean Shepherd's DNA is worked into the film," said Caseen Gaines, the Hackensack writer whose 2013 book "A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic" (ECW press) is the definitive making-of account.

"Not only is the film an adaptation of his story, but he narrates the voice of the older Ralphie," Gaines said. "This really is Jean Shepherd's film, in that regard."

A Christmas wish

Ralphie, as all the world knows, is the 9-year-old who wants nothing more in the world than a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. But in 1940 Indiana, he's surrounded by prosaic types — including his mother — who insist "you'll shoot your eye out."

Funny. Heartwarming. And — after a slow start in 1983 — a mainstream hit that has entered the cultural bloodstream as few films ever do.

"A Christmas Story" abides: in novelty store lady's-leg lamps and pink bunny suits, in a "Christmas Story" musical that played Broadway in 2012 and is now a staple in repertory, in the 24-hour "Christmas Story" movie marathons that run every Christmas on TBS and TNT (8 p.m. Dec. 24 to 8 p.m. Dec. 25). In 2022 there was a sequel, "A Christmas Story Christmas."

"There are things in that movie that just touch our core," said Bill Schmidt, lead tour guide of A Christmas Story House & Museum in Cleveland.

House tour

Each year, some 85,000 to 150,00 visitors troop through a pleasant, nondescript house on West 11th Street. Only to fans of "A Christmas Story," it's very descript.

It's the actual house where Ralphie lived with his brother Randy, his mom, and The Old Man. Or rather, it's the exterior of that house (much of the film was actually shot in Canada).

In 2005 a rabid fan, Brian Jones, purchased the house for $150,000, and had it completely refurbished to conform to the movie's interiors, complete with old-fashioned 1930s washing machine and a cake of Lifebuoy soap in the bathroom. The house (it was recently resold) is now a global attraction.

"We've had people from India, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, and of course a lot of people from Canada," Schmidt said. "We're an international business."

Meanwhile, to celebrate this month's 40th anniversary, Cleveland hosted its own "Christmas Story" convention — billed as "Ralphie Comes Home."

"Several of the actors were here," Schmidt said. "Ralphie was here. His brother was here. Several of the bullies. They were signing autographs."

Peter Billingsley (Ralphie), Ian Petrella (Randy), Zack Ward (Scut Farkus) and Yano Anaya (Grover Dill) are just some of the "Christmas Story" actors who have kept this movie alive on talk shows and fan conventions. People can't wait to ask them about tongues sticking to lampposts, serenading Chinese waiters, and packages marked "Frag-Gee-Lay."

Everybody, it seems, has a soft spot for "A Christmas Story."

Yet the guy who begat the whole thing was unsentimental, iconoclastic. A hipster who distrusted mainstream culture. "Creeping meatballism," he called it.

Night owl

Jean Shepherd first gained fame in 1955 as the overnight host of WOR radio in New York (he remained on the station until 1977).

His fans, he said were the "night people" — the nonconformists and rebels who don't keep 9 to 5 hours. And he loved to tweak the noses of the "day people" — the squares.

"He had a literary quality to his broadcasts," Gaines said. "He's an amazing storyteller."

"A Christmas Story" is warm, nostalgic, traditional. Very much a day-person movie. So how did the ultimate night person come to create it?

One answer: it wasn't his idea.

It was director Bob Clark ("Porky's"), a huge fan of Shepherd, who wooed the irascible humorist and eventually persuaded him to adapt (with Clark and Leigh Brown) his 1966 short story "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid," incorporating several other Shepherd stories for good measure.

The other answer is that, for all his surface cynicism, Shepherd was — arguably — a softie.

"What works so well in 'A Christmas Story' is that there is an honesty in it which I think is born out of Jean Shepherd's honesty with his audience," Gaines said. "And I think honesty can sometimes be mistaken for cynicism."

You know the type

Shepherd, who died in 1999 (he makes a cameo in the film, as the irate customer who tells Ralphie to get to the back of the line) based his characters on real people he was familiar with, growing up in the rust belt in Hammond, Indiana. Flick, Schwartz, Scut Farkus, were all based on people he knew.

What's more, we know them too.

"I always ask my guests: How many of them had a grumpy old man who still loved them?" Schmidt said. "How many had a self-sacrificing mother who hadn't had a hot meal in 25 years? How many had friends like Flick and Schwartz, or were friends like Flick and Schwartz? How many people have been bullied? How many people were the bullies? How many couldn't go to sleep on Christmas eve because of what Santa Claus will bring you?"

"A Christmas Story," in other words, is universal. So why wouldn't it have universal appeal?

"Most of us in the world are average," Schmidt said. "When we can watch somebody do something average that makes us laugh and touches our heart like that, it plays well with us regular folks."

Slow starter

It didn't play well at first.

"This film came out of nowhere, and didn't do very well," said Gaines, whose other books include "When Broadway Was Black," "E.T. The Extraterrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History," and (coming out in 2025) "If Ever a Wiz There Was," about the musical "The Wiz."

"You couldn't view 'A Christmas Story' in the theaters on Christmas, 1983, because it had already left the theaters," he said.

The film was an early beneficiary of VHS and cable TV. People caught it on the rebound — and recommended it to others. That's how Gaines discovered it, as a 7-year-old growing up in Hackensack.

"My mother loved this film before I did," he said. "She was surprised that as a kid I hadn't come across it."

He took to it instantly. Because of the "Little Rascals"-like hijinks of the kids, of course. But also because of the gruff but tender father, who appears to be ignoring Ralphie's pleas, but in the end — surprise! — gets him the BB gun of his dreams.

Several years later, there was a virtual replay of this scene at Gaines' house.

Life imitates art

What he wanted for Christmas, in 6th grade, was a computer. "That was the gift I wanted so fervently," he said. "And my mom said, we can't afford it. It's not in the cards this year."

Came Christmas morning — and he surveyed the spread under the tree. No computer.

"There was a three-and-a-half inch floppy disc holder in the shape of a computer," he recalled "And she said, 'That will have to do for now, until we can get you the computer.'

"I was very upset, but I didn't want to appear ungrateful. But I really lost it when my dad asked me to collect all the wrappings and take out the garbage."

Out he went, fuming. And there, on the back step, was the very computer he wanted. With a bow on it.

"I was thrilled," he said. "It felt like magic."

And mom and dad, having had their little joke — and perhaps teaching a little lesson about stoicism in the face of disappointment — were pretty pleased, too.

"They were so proud of themselves," he said. "Much like the parents in 'A Christmas Story.' "

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: 'A Christmas Story' movie turns 40, still a holiday favorite