Rating:

All Ralphie wants for Christmas is “an official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred-shot range model air rifle.”

And there it is. It’s the single most annoying, over-quoted, underwhelming, completely irrelevant quote in the entire canon of Christmas fare. It has somehow captured the hearts and minds of adults and children everywhere. In one of the finest Christmas films ever recorded, full of Christmas tree haggling, soap bar biting, electric leg lamps, tongues stuck on flagpoles, and Little Orphan Annie radio hours, that ridiculous little line about a damn BB gun is all that anyone ever talks about.

Well, I’m here to stop it.

This is not a film about a kid who wants a particular present. That’s certainly a theme, and it may come up three or four times in the film, but much more so, this film is about Christmas, plain and simple. Family Christmas. A child’s Christmas.

Perhaps the film’s original tagline said it best—it’s “A Tribute to the Original, Traditional, One-Hundred-Percent, Red-Blooded, Two-Fisted, All-American Christmas.”

The story does indeed concern young Ralphie Parker, a typical American boy from Hohman, Indiana, with a typical American family from the very same place. It’s based upon a collection of short stories by Jean Shephard, particularly those found in his book “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” and boy does it seem like it. The film is essentially a series of warmly familiar scenes depicting the sheer comedy that is the typical American Christmas. Each stands on its own, and has little or nothing to do with the others.

Usually, a film that seems more or less like a series of short stories stitched together is a major setback for me. It immediately translates to criticism and accusations of an incoherent plot. For this film, the opposite is true. The individual scenes are hilarious and none detract from the others. They all have a very Norman Rockwellian feel and theme, and they blend together to make a much better mishmash of tasty treats than any holiday fruitcake.

At times, however, the set pieces dip into a level of cartoonish immaturity that is mostly annoying and hardly inspires nostalgia. Ralphie daydreams, you see, as children will do. And so when he thinks about his teacher reading his essay about wanting that fucking BB gun, or when he daydreams about using it to chase off the bandit Black Bart and his cronies, goofy music plays, they shoot the scene in ultra-soft focus, and the actors take on the persona of 1920’s Vaudeville performers. It just distracts massively from the well-grounded antics of the rest of the film.

Antics like sons cursing after hearing their father use those words. A night haggling with a Christmas tree farmer. An afternoon eating Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant, the only restaurant open on Christmas day. Mail order contests. Very real, very identifiable things.

But there’s one thing above all others that make this film identifiable, and that is the ending. Or the ostensible “finale,” at least: Christmas morning. We all know, for god’s sake, that Ralphie has been asking for the goddamned motherfucking BB gun for Christmas. But what you may not know is that it appears as though he won’t get it. Everyone responds to his Christmas wish with the now famous line “You’ll shoot your eye out.” His mother. His teacher. Santa Claus himself.

Meanwhile, his father apparently could care less about what he wants. Darren McGavin turns in a legendary performance as the grumpy old American father, kind to his family and a decent provider, he still jumps at the opportunity to do something by himself and for himself. Be it enter a leg lamp contest, fix the furnace, change a tire. He loves his children, but only enough to give them a hug or a pat on the back from time to time. When it comes to wondering what they want for Christmas, he’s blissfully aloof.

Or so it seems. Until on Christmas morning, when Ralphie doesn’t get his BB gun. He gets a few toys, most notably a horrendous pink bunny rabbit suit, which prompts McGavin to spout the immortal line “He looks like a pink nightmare!”

A dejected Ralphie plops down in his rabbit suit. Where was Santa? Where was what he really wanted? But then, just then, dad tells him that he missed a present. What’s this? Another present? Everyone is surprised, especially Ralphie’s worrisome mother. But not dad. Dad’s positively jubilant. He watches as Ralphie rips open the package he hid behind the tree—it’s a BB GUN!!

The mother is appalled. Ralphie’s eyes nearly pop out of his head. And for the first time in this entire film (save the lamp), Ralphie’s dad has a genuine smile on his face. He’s so satisfied, so proud. The look on his face can only be described as love.

And that’s what this film is famous for. Not the ever present nostalgia. Not the schoolyard bullies. Not the small town atmosphere. Definitely not that BB gun. Those are things that people like about the film, but what makes it famous, and timeless, and classic, is the simple fact that it makes you feel like it’s Christmas morning.

It makes you feel like you did as a kid, getting that one perfect present. It makes you feel like you do as an adult, giving that one perfect present. And maybe most of all, it makes you feel like you do as a parent, giving your child that one, perfect, present.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• The Season Has Begun!
• A Christmas Story: A Rebuttal
• Jingle All The Way
• A Pinky and the Brain Christmas
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol