Why We’re So Obsessed With A Christmas Story 40 Years Later

Clint Worthington
·7 min read
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The post Why We’re So Obsessed With A Christmas Story 40 Years Later appeared first on Consequence.

Suppose you’re a red-blooded American growing up anywhere near a television for the last thirty years. In that case, chances are A Christmas Story is at least a tangential part of your holiday memories. Regardless of your thoughts on the film itself — I think it’s perfectly fine, if exceedingly overplayed — there’s no mistake that it’s wormed its way into the American lexicon by sheer dint of its omnipresence on TV screens during the holidays.

But how did such a small, independent holiday film — one with a decidedly jaundiced (and BB-pelted) eye towards the nostalgia of the 1940s — turn from a theatrical shrug into an unlikely American treasure? Let alone one that would spawn multiple sequels, including last year’s A Christmas Story Christmas.

Let’s turn back the clock, break out our Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Rings, and unravel the mystery. Just be sure to have your Ovaltine close at hand.

(Sidenote: For more great insights into the history, fandom, and making of A Christmas Story, I highly recommend Caseen Gaines’ book A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic, which was essential reading for this piece.)

A Christmas Childhood Without the Nostalgia

If you’re not looking closely at it, director Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story feels like a waxy, dreamlike ode to the childhood many (white) kids in post-war America enjoyed, especially in the Midwestern burgs of Indiana. The whole thing smacks of nostalgia, from the warm holiday music poured over the film to screenwriter/monologuist Jean Shepherd’s honeyed narration over Peter Billingsley’s innocent, expressive face as our put-upon boy hero, the BB gun-hungry Ralphie Parker.

But look closer (perhaps with the prescription readers of adulthood), and you start to realize that the superficial nostalgia goggles Clark uses are just a front for a deconstruction of the same nostalgia. Shepherd, after all, is a humorist (the film is based on his book “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” a series of semi-autobiographical stories he wrote for Playboy in the ’60s).

Across Ralphie’s film-long journey to get his beloved Red Ryder BB gun, Shepherd and Clark throw cold water on the fuzzy childhood memories of his recollection. Every time he talks about the BB gun he wants, virtually everyone warns him that “you’ll shoot your eye out!” His Old Man (Darren McGavin, the very picture of frazzled fatherhood) despairs at the holiday and all its stresses; his only respite is the lurid draw of a leggy novelty lamp, which sends his put-upon wife (Melinda Dillon) into a furious tailspin. Even Santa Claus, eternal friend to children, is shown here as a tyrannical, overworked mall employee who cares naught for Ralphie’s greatest holiday wish.

Disappointment colors every chapter of Ralphie’s Christmas, from promotional decoder ring messages (“Drink…more…Ovaltine”) to dorky bunny pajamas forced upon him by familial obligation. Even Ralphie’s overactive imagination can only think of petty revenge — see the “soap poisoning” that he wishes to blind him after his parents wash the curse words from his mouth. That’ll show ’em.

A Fra-Gee-Lay Theatrical Run

When the film was released in theaters on November 18th, 1983, it was met with modest success, though it was hardly the runaway smash that would immediately ensure its place as a Christmas staple. Reviews were lukewarm at best, respectable if hardly glowing; the box office returns even more listless. It earned $2 million in its opening weekend, over a mere 886 screens. While it hit #1 the following weekend, that momentum petered out, and the film squeaked out showtimes on a handful of screens by the time Christmas actually rolled around.

Some critics liked it; Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up, and Ebert wrote at the time that it “remembers, warmly and with love, the foibles of parents.” Others weren’t so kind, with John Harkness in Cinema Canada lamenting that it “fails to approximate” the sunny Christmas films of eons past, like Meet Me in St Louis and Miracle on 34th Street. (Though, as we’ve already discussed, that felt like the point.)

But with the mid-’80s came the rise of the twin booms of VHS and HBO, the engine that would resurrect many a forgotten film into cult status through mere exposure. After MGM re-released the film for the 1984 holiday season, it secured a more respectable return; in 1985, it would have its first showing on HBO, which began its renewed exposure to TV audiences at the time. It was VHS, though, that was the real savior, as renters took a chance on the underdog Christmas flick and made it a part of their regular holiday rotation.

Ted Turner to the Rescue

Still, a resurgent life for A Christmas Story on VHS wasn’t enough to keep MGM from insolvency, and the very next year (early 1986), they were forced to sell their film library to none other than Ted Turner. Seemingly seeing potential in the cult Christmas classic, Turner made it a regular staple of his Super Station cable channels starting in the 1988 holiday season. He didn’t have to do a big marketing push or herald the arrival with much fanfare; the strategy was “just put it on your stations, make people watch it, and they’ll fall in love with it.”

And that they did, especially when Turner Network Television (TNT) aired A Christmas Story as part of a seasonal block of movies and TV specials in December of 1990. What followed was a slow crawl of increasing ubiquity for the film across Turner’s networks, airing six times over Christmas weekend in 1995 — right as Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) merged with Time Warner, which owned Warner Bros. Pictures.

While ol’ Ted had teed up A Christmas Story as a cable-TV holiday mainstay, it was Warner Bros. who cranked the content spigot up to full blast. In 1997, Time Warner started running the film on TNT for a 24-hour loop over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, billed as “24 Hours of A Christmas Story.” It was a masterstroke, really, in an age before on-demand and streaming meant that you could pick what you wanted to watch. Harried parents and busy family members no longer needed to decide between a range of options. It was the Big Game or A Christmas Story. And, because the latter ran nonstop, you could probably manage both.

A Christmas Story Where Are They Now
A Christmas Story Where Are They Now

A Christmas Story (MGM)

The marathon was successful, of course, which led to the practice becoming de rigueur for TNT — until 2004, when the marathon moved from TNT to TBS, where it stayed till 2015. (In those last two years, it played on both TNT and TBS, staggered one hour apart so you didn’t have to miss a single minute.) After a one-year hiatus in 2016, it returned to its original home of TNT, where it’s lived ever since.

Most other Christmas movies reserve at least a little warmth for the holiday — some treacly message about the warm glow of family, the joy of community, and all that hokum. But not A Christmas Story, which barely masks its contempt for the season and all its compounding agonies with its warm Norman Rockwell glow.

For those of us who recognize that Christmas ain’t all mistletoe and chestnuts, it’s a welcome release valve from the cloying sweetness we see around the tree. And even though its nonstop exposure on family TVs has turned it into the very yuletide staple Shepherd would balk at, it goes a long way towards explaining why, this time of year, A Christmas Story is never far from our minds.

If you don’t want to wait for Christmas Eve and TNT, A Christmas Story is streaming now on HBO Max, as is A Christmas Story Christmas. 

Why We’re So Obsessed With A Christmas Story 40 Years Later
Clint Worthington

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