a christmas story essay

Essays About Christmas: Top 5 Examples and 6 Prompts

Christmas is the most celebrated holiday in the world. Discover our helpful guide that you can use to write essays about Christmas.

Christmas is known to many as the birthday of Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity. However, the festival has become more secular over the years and is celebrated by most people regardless of religion. Every December 25, something magical happens.

To most people, Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year.” People celebrate, gather at a friend or family member’s house, feast, and open gifts. Whether or not you celebrate it as a religious holiday, the feelings of warmth, joy, and nostalgia that Christmas evokes are universal and meaningful to all.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. the magic of christmas by erin, 2. the possibility of a merry covid christmas by sarah begley, 3. my christmas experience by elliot johnson.

• 4.  A personal reflection on Christmas by Jo Betz
• 5. ​​Christmas traditions around the world by Becky Such

6 Prompts for Essays About Christmas

1. what is christmas to you, 2. the history of christmas, 3. a christmas tradition, 4. christmas in your home country, 5. christmas in non-christian households, 6. why is christmas the most celebrated holiday.

“Although, a few years later, I found out that he was not real, the magic of Christmas still remains. I realized that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and this is something I hold close to my heart. With our family’s traditions and celebrating Jesus’ birth, the magic of Christmas will always be real for me.”

In this short essay, Erin reflects on her family’s Christmas traditions, particularly during her childhood. She recalls the food, music, and different practices of many Christmases ago; in particular, she remembers the magic of Santa Claus and how she wished to see him one day. She eventually found out Santa wasn’t real, but that did not take away the magic of Christmas from her. She still treasures Christmas and anticipates it yearly. 

“Maybe we will come roaring back with great excesses in the holiday season of 2021; it’s hard to imagine now, but who knows? Meanwhile, we can resolve to do something together. We can seize this unwanted opportunity to reimagine everything — to tell a new story about what the season of togetherness means for our country, our homes, and our relationships. In a time that requires distance, we can find new modes of closeness. In a year of austerity, we can rethink the purpose of wealth. And in a period of great uncertainty, we can decide what’s most meaningful about shared rituals.”

Begley discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the way we celebrate Christmas. We cannot have big family gatherings, travel, or attend big religious services as we used to, as guidelines discourage us from doing so. In addition, the declining economy is leaving more families with fewer resources to celebrate Christmas. This Christmas, it may be hard to be happy and celebrate for some, but Begley encourages us to use this time for introspection and to hope for better. 

“In the end, although every family has flaws, and always seems to have a political divide in it, the family is the most special part of Christmas, just like it is for Thanksgiving. Family is one of, if not the most important things in life, and it is very important to stay close to one’s family and all of its members, and that is what Christmas is, and always will be to me.”

In his essay, Johnson gives a brief overview of Christmas and discusses his attitude toward the celebrations in his household. He remembers how as an introvert, he had to interact with many people and how he needed to give up his room for guests to sleep in. However, Johnson greatly appreciates Christmas for being able to unite and bring together a family of very diverse views and perspectives. 

4.   A personal reflection on Christmas by Jo Betz

“My daughter and I purchase a Christmas decoration each year for my husband to put on the tree. It’s something that brings us joy as we select the decoration we think he’d love. But there are other ways you can honour your loved one too – light a candle, write them a letter, purchase them a present, share stories about them on Christmas day. Find a way to honour the person you are missing so much.”

Betz reflects on how the death of a loved one, in this case, her husband, can make it difficult to enjoy Christmas. However, being with her daughter allows her to appreciate the holidays through all the pain. She gives people in a similar situation tip on how to cope, including not keeping such a big “to-do” list, honoring your loved one, and allowing yourself to grieve. You might also be interested in these essays about autumn .

5. ​​ Christmas traditions around the world by Becky Such

“Christmas trees were decorated with candles and topped with an angel or star, to remind children of the angel that brought ‘news of great joy’ to the shepherds in the fields, or the star that guided the ‘Three Kings’ to Bethlehem. In modern times, we’ve kept the star or angel topper, but dropped the candles. Covering a dry tree in lit candles was, of course, a massive fire hazard. Pretty silly of those Victorians if you ask me.   Today, Christmas trees are decorated with tinsel, fairy-lights and small, hanging ornaments – the joy and brightness of the Christmas tree is still a great reminder of Jesus as the ‘Light of the World’.” 

In her essay, Such describes some Christmas traditions from different countries, including different pastries and sweets, fireworks, lanterns, and the iconic Christmas tree. Then, she explains the differences in Christmas celebrations worldwide and how these traditions have evolved. 

Christmas has a different significance for each person. First, reflect on the meaning of Christmas; think of what your family and friends have told you, what you learned in school, and your thoughts. Next, discuss any religious, cultural, or family traditions that have influenced how you view Christmas. Finally, open up to your readers about the true meaning of Christmas. Perhaps Christmas means spending time with family and friends or giving back to the community. Whatever your viewpoint, share it in this essay.

For your essay, research how Christmas originated and how the festival has changed over the decades. Explain how it came about and the differences between Christmas celebrations over time. As with all historical essays, cite credible, well-researched sources for an accurate essay. 

Think about a tradition you have practiced for many Christmases with family, friends, or the greater community. What does it entail? Explain your chosen tradition in detail and reflect on its significance. 

Christmas is celebrated differently from country to country, with climate, religion, culture, and demographics affecting its importance in each. Based on personal experience and research, write your essay about how Christmas is celebrated in your country. Explain the traditions, the food eaten, and the history behind the Christmas celebration.

Early Christians originally conceived Christmas as a festival to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but it has become more secular over the years. A large number of non-Christians celebrate it. Based on research, write about how non-Christians celebrate Christmas and why they do so. If you have personal experience with this, incorporate what you know into your essay.

Whenever the word “holiday” is mentioned, Christmas automatically comes to mind for most. In your essay, look into what makes Christmas so popular: Why do people treasure it so much, and why do more people celebrate it than other holidays? Be sure to use credible sources as the basis for your essay.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

View all posts

Christmas Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on christmas essay.

Christmas is a well-known Christian holiday set in December, celebrated the world over and famed for its decorations and Santa Clause. The Christmas means  “Feast day of Christ”.It is a yearly celebration marking Jesus Christ’s birth; it is observed on the 25th of December as a cultural and religious celebration among a lot of people all over the world. Christmas is celebrated in all Christian countries but there are differences in the way each nation celebrates this date.

History Behind Christmas

The history of Christmas is one that dates back to a very long time; the first Christmas was celebrated in 336 A.D. in Rome. It played a very important role during the famed Arian controversy that took place in the 300s. During the early years of the middle age, epiphany overshadowed it.

Christmas was brought back to limelight around 800 A.D. when the emperor Charlemagne received the crown on Christmas day. During the 17th century, the Puritans had Christmas banned because it was associated with drunkenness and different other misbehavior.

It was made a proper holiday around 1660 but was still quite disreputable. Around the early 1900s, the Oxford movement of the Anglican Communion church started and this led to the revival of Christmas.

Preparations for Christmas

Christmas is a cultural festivity that entails a lot of preparations. It is a public holiday and so people get a Christmas break to celebrate it.

Preparations for Christmas start early for most people so that celebrations begin on the eve of Christmas. Preparations for Christmas involves a lot of activities. People usually buy decorations, food, and gifts mostly for children in the family and friends. Some families shop for matching Christmas outfits for everyone.

The common preparations include decorations of the place with Christmas trees, lighting. Before decorations begin, the house must be deep cleaned. The Christmas tree brings the Christmas spirit in homes.

Presents are placed under the Christmas tree in wrapped gift boxes and are not to be opened until Christmas day. The church is also decorated for the special event. Thorough cleaning of the churches is also done to usher in Christmas. Songs and skits to be performed on Christmas day.

People usually spend a lot on Christmas and so saving money for these plans should be the earliest preparation among all these. Families also plan to travel to stay together during this celebration period. Traditionally turkey is the common meal across the world in this day. Cards are also written to friends and family to wish them a happy holiday and to show love.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Christmas Day Celebration

Christmas carols are played on radios and televisions to mark the day. Most families start by going to church where performances and songs are done. Then later, they join their families to exchange gifts and celebrate with food and music. Happiness during Christmas is like no other.

Homemade traditional plum cakes, cupcakes, and muffins are the special treats on Christmas. Kids are showered with lots of presents and new dresses. They also get to meet the ‘Santa Claus’, dressed in a fluffy red and white costume, who greets them with hugs and gifts.

Conclusion:

Christmas reminds us of the importance of giving and sharing with friends and family. Through Christmas, we know that Jesus birth is the beginning of great things in the world. It is generally an opportunity to think about nature and the reason for our existence. Christmas is such a festival which people from all religions and faith celebrate worldwide despite it being a Christian festival. It is the essence of this festival which unites the people so much.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• Future Fables
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Just the Right Book
• Lit Century
• The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan
• New Books Network
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

On the Weird Little Essays That Inspired A Christmas Story

The literary disco crew discusses jean shepherd's in god we trust.

On today’s special holiday episode, Rider, Tod, and Julia discuss the work of storyteller and humorist Jean Shepherd, whose book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash formed the basis for the classic 1980 film A Christmas Story .

From the episode:

Julia: Reading the book reminded me and pulled me directly into this question, and I had to start Googling my ass off. This takes place in the Depression.

Rider: I know, I couldn’t believe it!

Julia: This is not Main Street, USA. There’s a shabbiness to the house. There’s a shabbiness to their life. Everybody wants things and they’re trying to get free shit. And in the book it’s hit hard, like, how snazzy Ovaltine is. I like that element. I’ve always thought of this as a ’50s setting, but it’s not.

Tod: Yeah, the book is very clearly in the Depression. I think the movie is a little bit more nebulous as to the exact time, which makes it sort of classic Americana, right?

Rider: But it’s radio, not television. It’s definitely pre-’40s, or right on the cusp of the ’40s.

Tod: But when you think about the sort of shabby, weird neighbors, everyone is super poor, they’re eating the garbage—it’s not a time of prosperity. And the super poor people are portrayed as villains. And then of course you think about, well, they’re portrayed as villains because they don’t have anything. They were stealing to eat. So, there’s a lot of complexity that’s involved in this beyond just a simple Christmas story.

Rider: I feel like the book really brings out a lot of those issues. It’s a truly strange book. I found it very unsettling to read. Honestly. It’s structured in this really weird, kind of hokey way, where the narrator, Jean Shepherd, is going back to his hometown in Indiana from New York City, and he’s sitting at a bar, and he runs into his old buddy Flick, who’s now a bartender at Flick’s Tavern, and he spends the day drinking there, and that is the frame for these little monologues and these little interludes.

What I really liked about it was how much, by the end especially, class—the things you guys are talking about—really rose to the forefront. And brought out some of the things that bother me about A Christmas Story the movie, kind of made them make sense and contextualize them in a really cool way. But then there’s other parts of this nostalgic tone and the sort of like, “oh, shucks, good old boy,” that is really weird. When it talks about women especially, and girls and dating, and you realize how limited this worldview is. It made me uncomfortable at times. It was like, are we really nostalgic for this?

Tod: Contextually, of course, this came out in 1966, written about the 1930s, but also they’re written in—you wouldn’t call it literary fiction or literary nonfiction. It really is Saturday Evening Post -y with the single paragraph that wraps it all up. There’s a moral to the story. The moral to the story often is, everything’s horrible—on to the next thing!

To listen to the rest of the episode, as well as the whole archive of Literary Disco , subscribe and listen on iTunes or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Publishing, publishers of the Faraway Collection. Download now at Amazon.com/FarawayStories .

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Literary Disco

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Follow us on Twitter

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter, Read by a Full Cast

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

The Man Who Told A Christmas Story

What i learned from jean shepherd..

Photo courtesy KYW Newsradio

Wrapping presents while watching Ralphie pine for a Red Riding BB gun has become a holiday tradition as beloved and durable as candy canes and eggnog. Yet the author and narrator of A Christmas Story , Jean Shepherd, had a deeper legacy of enchanting, subtly barbed storytelling as a longtime voice on nightly radio. In 2008, Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen recounted growing up in suburban New Jersey enthralled by Shepherd’s radio show. His piece is reprinted below.

If you know Jean Shepherd’s name, it’s probably in connection with the now-classic film A Christmas Story , which is based on a couple of stories in his book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash . He also does the compelling voice-over narration. On Christmas, TBS will continue its tradition of presenting a 24-hour Christmas Story marathon. There are annual fan conventions devoted to the film — released 25 years ago this Thanksgiving — and the original location in Cleveland has been turned into a museum . But long before A Christmas Story was made, Shepherd did a nightly radio broadcast on WOR out of Manhattan that enthralled a generation of alienated young people within range of the station’s powerful transmitter. Including me: I was a spy for Jean Shepherd.

In the late ‘50s, while Lenny Bruce was beginning his climb to holy infamy in jazz clubs on the West Coast, Shepherd’s all-night monologues on WOR had already gained him an intensely loyal cult of listeners. Unlike Bruce’s provocative nightclub act, which had its origins in the “schpritz” of the Catskills comics, Shepherd’s improvised routines were more in the tradition of Midwestern storytellers like Mark Twain, but with a contemporary urban twist: say, Mark Twain after he’d been dating Elaine May for a year and a half. Where Bruce’s antics made headlines, Shepherd, with his warm, charismatic voice and folksy style, could perform his most subversive routines with the bosses in the WOR front office and the FCC being none the wiser. At least most of the time.

I was introduced to Shep, as his fans called him, by my weird uncle Dave. Dave, who was a bit of a hipster, used to crash on our sofa when he was between jobs. Being a bookish and somewhat imperious 12-year-old, already desperately weary of life in suburban New Jersey and appalled by Hoss and Little Joe and Mitch Miller and the heinous Bachelor Father , I figured Dave was my man. One night, after ruthlessly beating me at rummy, he put down the cards and said, “Now we’re gonna listen to Shepherd—this guy’s great.” The Zenith table model in the kitchen came to life midway through Shepherd’s theme music, a kitschy, galloping Eduard Strauss piece called the “Bahn Frei” polka . And then there was that voice, cozy, yet abounding with jest.

He was definitely a grown-up but he was talking to me—I mean straight to me, with my 12-year-old sensibility, as if some version of myself with 25 more years worth of life experience had magically crawled into the radio, sat down, and loosened his tie. I was hooked. From then on, like legions of other sorry-ass misfits throughout the Northeast, I tuned in every weeknight at 11:15 and let Shep put me under his spell. Afterward, I’d switch to an all-night jazz station and dig the sounds until I conked out. Eventually, this practice started to affect my grades and I almost didn’t graduate from high school.

Listening to Shep, I learned about social observation and human types: how to parse modern rituals (like dating and sports); the omnipresence of hierarchy; joy in struggle; “slobism”; “creeping meatballism”; 19 th -century panoramic painting; the primitive, violent nature of man; Nelson Algren, Brecht, Beckett, the fables of George Ade; the nature of the soul ; the codes inherent in “trivia,” bliss in art; fishing for crappies ; and the transience of desire. He told you what to expect from life (loss and betrayal) and made you feel that you were not alone.

Shepherd’s talk usually fell into one of four categories. Fans of A Christmas Story will be familiar with the basic comic tone of his Depression-era tales, elaborations on his experience growing up in Hammond, Ind., a Chicago suburb in the shadow of the U.S. Steel Works on Lake Michigan. These stories featured his manic father (“the old man”); his mother (always standing over the sink in “a yellow rump-sprung chenille bathrobe with bits of dried egg on the lapel”); his kid brother, Randy, and assorted pals , bullies, beauties, and other neighborhood types. While the film preserves much of the flavor of Shep’s humor, not much remains of the acid edge that characterized his on-air performances. In the film, the general effect is one of bittersweet nostalgia; on the radio, the true horror of helpless childhood came through.

Then there were the stories culled from his three years in the stateside Army during World War II (a juvenile ham radio and electronics freak, he was assigned to the Signal Corps). The third hunk of material was informed by his adventures in postwar radio and TV. He seems to have done every possible job, from engineer to sportscaster to hosting live cowboy music broadcasts. Finally, there was the contemporary stuff, comments on the passing scene.

In between, he’d sing along to noisy old records, play the kazoo and the nose flute, brutally sabotage the commercials, and get his listeners—the “night people,” the “gang”—to help him pull goofy public pranks on the unwitting squares that populated most of Manhattan. In one famous experiment in the power of hype, Shepherd asked his listeners to go to bookstores and make requests for I, Libertine , a nonexistent novel by a nonexistent author, Frederick R. Ewing. The hoax quickly snowballed and several weeks later I, Libertine was on best-seller lists. (Shep and sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon eventually codged together an actual novel for Ballantine Books. I owned a copy.)

Hilarious as Shep’s tales could be, one sensed a tough realism about life that ran counter to the agitprop for the Leisure Revolution that the media were serving up in those years. With the Soviets flexing their muscles and the constant specter of global nuclear war, the government was going to fantastic lengths to convince everyone that things were just peachy. From Bert the Turtle ’s exhortations to “duck and cover” in the face of an atomic blast to the endless parade of new products hawked on the tube by Madison Avenue, Americans were feeding themselves a line of hooey that was no less absurd than the most hard-core Maoist brainwash. “Relax, life is good,” we were told. “Your government and Walt Disney have got the future well in hand.” To skeptical Mad magazine-reading little stinkers like myself, it was this mendacity on the part of adults that was the most sinister enemy of all.

Because Shep made it clear he was just as dazed, enraged, and amused as you were, that he noticed what you noticed, he established himself as one of a handful of adults you could trust. (Others were Mailer, Ginsberg, Vonnegut, and Realist publisher Paul Krassner.) Night after night, Shepherd forged the inchoate thoughts and feelings of a whole generation of fans into an axiom that went something like: “The language of our culture no longer describes real life and, pretty soon, something’s gonna blow.”

Toward the beginning of the show, Shepherd frequently read news clippings that listeners, his “spies,” had sent in. These were mostly odd little fillers he called “straws in the wind,” indicators of the prevailing mood. Once I mailed Shep an article from our local Central Jersey paper about a guy who, after being fired for some petty infraction, got loaded and tossed a Coke bottle through every store window in the local shopping mall. A couple of nights later, I’m listening to the show and Shep does his usual bit: “So, this kid sent me a piece …” and ACTUALLY READ MY CLIP ON THE AIR! Wham: I had connected. My life as an independent consciousness had begun. I remember scurrying down to the “TV room” and announcing this amazing event to my parents. Having always considered both Shepherd and my uncle Dave to be half-cracked, they were greatly underwhelmed.

As grateful as I am that Shep was there for me during those crucial years, my idealization of Shepherd the Man was not to survive much longer. In December of 1965, I came home from my first year of college for Christmas break and noticed that Shepherd was going to be appearing at nearby Rutgers University. On a frosty night, I drove my used Ford Galaxy to New Brunswick, where I sat on the floor with a congregation of Rutgers students and watched Shep walk into the spotlight to enthusiastic applause. He had neat but stylishly long hair and was wearing a green corduroy sports coat with the collar up over a black turtleneck T.

Onstage for almost two hours, he had the young audience in his pocket from the downbeat. But, for me, something wasn’t right. On the radio, speaking close to the mic, he was able to use vocal nuances and changes in intensity to communicate the most intimate shadings of thought and feeling, not unlike what Miles Davis could achieve in a recording studio. Live onstage, he spoke as though he’d never seen a microphone in his life, trying to project to the back of the room. Moreover, he blared and blustered like a carnival barker, as if he had the scent of failure in his nostrils and was ready to do anything to get the crowd on his side. It was obvious that the guy I thought was so cool had a desperate need to impress all these people, whom I assumed to be casual listeners at best.

In truth, even at home, listening on the radio, I’d noticed a strain of grandiosity creeping into Shepherd’s routines. Apparently, he’d originally come to New York with the idea of being a stage actor or making it big on network TV. But it’s easy to imagine mainstream producers and network execs being put off by Shepherd’s contrariness and intrinsic marginality. Supposedly, when Steve Allen retired as host of The Tonight Show , he’d suggested Shepherd as a replacement. NBC ended up giving the job to the eccentric but more cuddly Jack Paar. In any case, as the years rolled by, Shepherd rankled at being confined to the ghetto of radio and must have come to see his crown as King of the Hipsters as a crown of thorns.

What I saw that night at Rutgers wasn’t pretty. In the studio, his occasional abuse of the lone engineer on the other side of the glass could be seen as the petulance of an artist trying to make things work on the fly. But, incandescent under the gaze of all those kids, his self-indulgences looked more like straight-up narcissism and his “hipness” was revealed as something closer to contempt. By the end of the show, he’d crossed the line between artist and showman and then some. No longer wanting to meet the great man, I left before the reception, scraped the ice off my windshield, and drove home. Anyway, the cool early ‘60s were over and the boiling, psychedelic late ‘60s had begun. Shepherd was no longer part of my world.

Not long ago, in the absence of any books, films, music, etc., that seemed to give off any light, I started looking back at some of the things that used to inspire me as a kid, including some of Shep’s old shows, now available on the Internet. Hearing them almost a half-century down the line has been a trip. Despite the tendencies I’ve already mentioned (plus the gaffes one might expect from a wild man like Shep ad-libbing before the age of political correctness), much of the stuff is simply amazing: The guy is a dynamo, brimming with curiosity and ideas and fun. Working from a few written notes at most, Shepherd is intense, manic, alive, the first and only true practitioner of spontaneous word jazz.

I’ve done a little catch-up research: Shepherd stayed on at WOR until 1977, when the station did a makeover. His books, collections of stories based on the same material he used on the air, sold well. He had a successful career on public television and continued to do his bit on stage into the ‘90s. And, of course, there was the collaboration with director Bob Clark on A Christmas Story . But I’m sorry to report that the narcissism thing kept getting worse as he got older.

Like a lot of fine-tuned performing artists, Shepherd increasingly exhibited the whole range of symptoms common to the aging diva. He became paranoid and resentful of imagined rivals, whether they were old ones like Mort Sahl or upstarts like Garrison Keillor. At the same time, he disavowed all his radio work, claiming that it was just a temporary gig on his way to some fanciful glory on the stage and screen. He even seemed to want to kill off his childhood, insisting that all those stories and characters were pulled clean out of his imagination. Old fans, for whom he had been almost like a surrogate father or big brother, were often met with derision when they approached him.

He didn’t drink himself to death like his pal Jack Kerouac or OD like Lenny Bruce but gradually succumbed to that very real disease of self-loathing and its accompanying defenses. Disappointed in the way the world had treated him, he retired to Florida’s west coast and died in 1999 .

Although Shepherd almost never divulged details about his private life, he wasn’t shy about giving us a bit of unflattering self-analysis, as this fragment of a show from 1957 attests:

Protective coloration is extremely important in our lives. … [W]e are in the weeds all the time because we find it better down here in the weeds. … Look at me. … I am not at all what I appear to be. … [T]his is merely a mask … that more or less covers up the real me that’s underneath. The real me is a saber-toothed tiger. I couldn’t dare go down the street the way I really am. I’d get shot in five minutes. They’d have me in a wagon with a bunch of Doberman pinschers.

To an adolescent back then, long before a therapeutic vernacular had entered the language, this was reassuring news. It’s possible that Shep’s greatest lesson to the gang wasn’t just “things are not what they seem” but rather “things are not what they seem—including me.”

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Books — A Christmas Carol

Essays on A Christmas Carol

Prompt examples for "a christmas carol" essays, redemption and transformation.

Discuss the theme of redemption and transformation in "A Christmas Carol." How does Ebenezer Scrooge's journey from a miserly and cold-hearted man to a generous and compassionate one illustrate the possibility of change and personal growth?

The Impact of the Ghosts

Analyze the roles and symbolism of the three spirits—Past, Present, and Future—in the novella. How do they influence Scrooge's understanding of his own life and the consequences of his actions? Discuss the lessons imparted by each ghost.

Social Critique and Poverty

Examine Charles Dickens' critique of social inequality and poverty in Victorian England. How does the novella shed light on the hardships faced by the poor and the indifference of the wealthy? Discuss the contrast between Scrooge's wealth and the Cratchit family's poverty.

The Symbolism of Christmas

Discuss the symbolism of Christmas in the novella. How does the holiday represent themes of joy, love, and goodwill, and how is it contrasted with Scrooge's initial disdain for it? Analyze the significance of the Cratchits' celebration.

Scrooge's Character Development

Analyze the growth and development of Ebenezer Scrooge as a character. How do his experiences with the spirits and the visions of his past, present, and future shape his personality and actions? Discuss the factors that lead to his transformation.

The Role of Tiny Tim

Explore the significance of the character Tiny Tim in the novella. How does his vulnerability and need for assistance highlight the importance of compassion and social responsibility? Discuss the impact of Tiny Tim on Scrooge's transformation.

Hook Examples for "A Christmas Carol" Essays

Anecdotal hook.

"As I delved into the heartwarming tale of Scrooge's redemption and transformation, I couldn't help but reflect on the timeless message of generosity, compassion, and the power of second chances."

Rhetorical Question Hook

"What does it take for a miserly old man to undergo a profound change of heart and rediscover the true spirit of Christmas? Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' invites us to explore themes of redemption and the human capacity for change."

Startling Quote Hook

"'I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.' Ebenezer Scrooge's vow serves as a poignant reminder of the novella's enduring message of goodwill and transformation."

Historical Hook

"Set in Victorian London during a period of social and economic upheaval, 'A Christmas Carol' provides a window into the challenges and inequalities of the time. Exploring this historical context adds depth to the narrative."

Narrative Hook

"Join Ebenezer Scrooge on his extraordinary journey through the past, present, and future as he confronts his own life choices. This narrative captures the essence of Charles Dickens' storytelling."

Character Transformation Hook

"Witness Scrooge's remarkable transformation from a cold-hearted miser to a benevolent soul. Analyzing the character arc adds depth to the narrative."

Moral Lessons Hook

"What moral lessons can we learn from the experiences of Scrooge and the spirits? Exploring the ethical dimensions of the novella prompts reflection on our own values and actions."

Christmas Spirit Hook

"How does 'A Christmas Carol' capture the essence of the holiday spirit? Delving into the themes of generosity, family, and community sheds light on the novella's enduring appeal."

Social Commentary Hook

"In a time marked by social disparities, 'A Christmas Carol' serves as a commentary on the plight of the poor and the responsibilities of the wealthy. Examining the novella's social impact offers valuable insights."

Dickens' Literary Legacy Hook

"How does 'A Christmas Carol' contribute to Charles Dickens' literary legacy? Exploring the novella's place in Dickens' body of work reveals its enduring significance in literature and culture."

Future Ghost in a Christmas Carol

A christmas carol: themes, redemption, and dickens's craft, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Comparing and Contrasting "A Christmas Carol" Book and Movie Adaptation

Analysis of scrooge's transformation in a christmas carol, the changes of ebenezer scrooge in a christmas carol, how scrooge represents hyprocisy in "a christmas carol", let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Morality in a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The transformation of scrooge as highlighted in "a christmas carol", a reflection on a christmas carol by charles dickens, the ghosts of christmas as illustrated in "a christmas carol", get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Charles Dickens’ a Christmas Carol Vs. Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone

A criticism of christmas by a capitalist in "a christmas carol", a christmas carol as a moral maxim, the episodes of christmas as highlighted in "a christmas carol", exploring dickens’ views on money in a christmas carol, a study of the personality of scrooge in charles dickens’ book the christmas carol, how religion and secular practises became part of christmas, an analysis of the use of tone in a christmas carol, a book by charles dickens, a detailed look at the role of emotions in "a christmas carol", the perfect christmas from the perspective of "a christmas carol", charles dickens' terrible childhood, scrooge's transformation in "a christmas carol", generosity theme in "a christmas carol", theme of redemption in "a christmas carol", how does scrooge change throughout the novel, how is fred presented in "a christmas carol".

19 December 1843, Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present, The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Fred, Fezziwig, Belle, Peter Cratchit, Martha Cratchit, Fan, The Portly Gentlemen, Mrs. Cratchit

1. Jaffe, A. (1994). Spectacular sympathy: visuality and ideology in Dickens's A Christmas Carol. PMLA, 109(2), 254-265. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/spectacular-sympathy-visuality-and-ideology-in-dickenss-a-christmas-carol/5B6363CBCC63BF021719079F3B1269BB) 2. Davis, P. (1990). Literary History: Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture-Text. The American Scholar, 59(1), 109-115. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41211762) 3. Butterworth, R. D. (1993). 'A Christmas Carol'and the masque. Studies in short fiction, 30(1), 63-70. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA14085617&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00393789&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E3330b394) 4. Rossetti, C. G. (1887). A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Hobby horse, x-xi. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/b179c1c578656647/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=14714) 5. Ferrari, A., Signoroni, S., Silva, M., Gaggiotti, P., Veneroni, L., Magni, C., ... & Massimino, M. (2017). “Christmas Balls”: a Christmas carol by the adolescent cancer patients of the Milan Youth Project. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.5301/tj.5000597?journalCode=tmja) 6. Hancock, P. (2016). A Christmas carol: A reflection on organization, society, and the socioeconomics of the festive season. (https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amr.2016.0038?journalCode=amr) 7. Hancher, M. (2008). Grafting A Christmas Carol. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 48(4), 813-827. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/254074/summary) 8. Burleson, D. R. (1992). Dickens's a Christmas Carol. The Explicator, 50(4), 211-212. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00144940.1992.9935321?journalCode=vexp20) 9. Preston, S. (2012). Existential Scrooge: A Kierkegaardian Reading of A Christmas Carol. Literature Compass, 9(11), 743-751. (https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2012.00909.x)

Relevant topics

• Of Mice and Men
• A Modest Proposal
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• Between The World and Me
• Things Fall Apart
• Call of The Wild
• A Long Way Gone
• Harrison Bergeron

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

A Christmas Carol by Dickens Essay

A Christmas Carol by Dickens was first published on December 19, 1843. Since its publication, this book, arguably one of his most famous works, has made its mark on American culture and literature. It is difficult to underestimate the significance of A Christmas Carol , which was made into numerous TV and stage versions. Some would even argue that this Dickens’s work invented or rather reinvented Christmas, while others underline the importance of his work for the development of the new forms of literature. This essay aims to discuss the theme and the characters of the book. It starts with a summary of the plot, then examines the main characters and the themes and concludes with the personal opinion on the novella.

Dickens offers a story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy and selfish older man living alone in his London house, whose only concern is money. Scrooge hates Christmas and is indifferent to other people’s suffering, including his workers. However, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his business partner and by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future. The first ghost takes him on a journey through his past Christmases: one of a miserable and lonely little boy and others of a young man, more interested in gold than in his fiancé. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge his clerk’s family Christmas, a Christmas evening of a poor, but loving family, and his nephew’s celebrations, where guests mock him for his unfriendliness and greediness. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future shows him his own death, which would bring more joy to people who knew him than grief. The terror of this night magically transforms Ebenezer Scrooge into a generous and good-hearted man, kind to his neighbors and eager to help those in need.

The main hero of the book, Ebenezer Scrooge, is characterized mainly by his greediness and by the fear that he creates among people who know him. Charles Dickens describes (1843, 4) him as such: “No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man […] inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge”. Even his clerk is terrified of him and barely dares to speak in his presence.

According to Thompson (2017, 269), the descriptions of Scrooge’s personality allude to the Old Testament figure of King Belshazzar, the ruler who loves wealth and who is punished by God for his greed and pride. However, unlike Belshazzar, Scrooge takes advantage of the warning delivered by the Christmas ghosts and changes, fearing the dreadful end that is awaiting him. He accepts to change and declares: “I will not shut out the lessons that they [the Spirits of the Past, the Present and the Future] teach” (Dickens 1843, 57). Thus, he is a sinner, but the night that he goes through makes hem find the strength to change. This magical and radical overnight transformation becomes central to the figure of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Other central figures are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. The Ghost of Christmas Past is the first ghost to visit Scrooge; he is quite and rather compassionate towards Scrooge, to whom he shows the pictures of his childhood. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a joyful and vibrant character, wearing a green robe and symbolizing joy and happiness. The third Ghost is the most fearsome one; he wears a black cloak and remains silent during their journey. Although the ghosts have distinct personalities, their common characteristic is their role as the messengers. Their figures also reflect Dickens’ interest in “the narrative possibilities of the communication between the living and the dead” (Wood 2018, 412). Dickens’s interest in the supernatural urges him to experiment with the forms of expression and create the figures of these Spirits to deliver the message to Scrooge.

Another prominent figure is Tiny Tim, who is the most significant figure of childhood in the book. He is a son of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk. He has a disability, but is full of cheer and love and brings a lot of joy to his family. His words – “God bless us every one!” – mark the end of the novella (Dickens 1843, 92). The figure of Tiny Tim reflects the conception of childhood as the stage of innocence, although it is not the only way children are represented in the novella (Robinson 2016, 8). For instance, the readers observe frightening figures of children clinging to the clothes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Contrary to this image of “figures which are a product of a fallen world (Robinson 2016, 2), Tim is a constant reminder to everyone of the courage in the face of difficulties.

The characters of A Christmas Carol serve to express Dickens’s Christian humanistic views and attitudes. According to Newey (2016, 12), A Christmas Carol is one of the most important works of Charles Dickens in a sense that it “brings into focus many of Dickens’s core concerns and attitudes of mind.” Dickens demonstrates the transformation of a greedy lender with no sympathy to others, which symbolizes capitalist and rationalist values, into the embodiment of Christianity and humanism.

The contrast between Dickens’s characters furthers strengthens the differences between two ideologies, the humanistic and the capitalist one. The family of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk, is a model of a loving family, poor in money but rich in heart, while Scrooge himself reflects utilitarian, purely rationalist values. The values of family loyalty, humanism, kindness, are confronted with the rationalism and greediness of the protagonist.

Another theme of the novella is the relationship between the supernatural and the living. As stated above, Dickens’s works have significantly contributed to the development of the Victorian ghost story. His fascination with the supernatural makes him create the powerful figures of the Ghost of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, who communicate with the protagonist and act as the messengers of the divine. This communication between the living and the supernatural is central to the plot. This theme reoccurs in Dickens’s works, for instance, in “The Signalman,” although in total, it is present in about 18 Dickens’s stories. The critical result of the supernatural intervention is that it leads to change and transforms the protagonist.

Although often presented as a children’s story, Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol tells a reader a lot about Dickens’s attitudes and views about the world. This novella promotes the humanistic ideology based on Christian values: love, empathy, and generosity. Moreover, the author experiments with literary forms and contributes to the development of the ghost story. The supernatural plays a central role in the transformation of the main hero. However, the idea that the protagonist needs supernatural intervention in order to change might be problematic for the humanistic perspective that is centered on the agency of human beings. The humanistic perspective stresses the inherently good qualities of human nature, which is contradictory to the idea that supernatural intervention is necessary in order to bring change.

Newey, Vincent. 2016. The Scriptures of Charles Dickens: Novels of Ideology, Novels of the Self. New York: Routledge.

Robinson, David E. 2016. “Redemption and the Imagination of Childhood: Dickens’s Representation of Children in A Christmas Carol.” Literator 37 (1): 1-8. Web.

Thompson, Terry W. 2017. “The Belshazzar Allusion in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.” The Explicator 75 (4): 268-270. Web.

Wood, Claire. 2018. “Playful Spirits: Charles Dickens and the Ghost Story.” In The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story, edited by Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston, 87-96. New York: Routledge.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 13). A Christmas Carol by Dickens. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens/

"A Christmas Carol by Dickens." IvyPanda , 13 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'A Christmas Carol by Dickens'. 13 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "A Christmas Carol by Dickens." December 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens/.

1. IvyPanda . "A Christmas Carol by Dickens." December 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "A Christmas Carol by Dickens." December 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens/.

• A Christmas Carol of Dickens: Never Too Late for a Change of Heart
• "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens Literary Analysis
• Financial Accounting by Dr. Ebenezer
• Employment Issues at the Ebenezer Tea Rooms
• Charles Dickens's Childhood Experiences
• Chapter 33 of "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Dickens
• Lireture Analysis: Charles Dickens
• "A Visit to Newgate" by Charles Dickens
• “Sketched by Boz” the Book by Charles Dickens
• Pip and Joe in “Great Expectations” by Dickens
• The Coming of Age in Mississippi: Memoir by Anne Moody
• The Bluest Eye by Morrison: Characters, Themes, Personal Opinion
• Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Into the Wild: Characters, Themes, Personal Opinion

New Product! Create Academic and Professional Success with “Academic Vocabulary”!

Christmas Essay & Story Writing Prompts for Kids

Christmas is a wonderful time of year for student writing. There is a very high level of student motivation! Student interest and motivation stays high when students write about Christmas coming from different angles and with different purposes.

Here is a great list of Christmas essay and story writing ideas! Remember, using “Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay” will ensure your students can start and finish any of these wonderful essay and story ideas  in under 30 minutes! Now that’s a gift!

Please Note : Alexander Bain’s widely accepted century-old model holds that there are only four modes of discourse: 1) descriptive 2) narrative 3) expository and 4) argument/persuasive. Many of the headings below are “organizational models or patterns” and can be combined with the four main modes of discourse. Example: The “cause and effect pattern” can be expressed in the descriptive, narrative, expository, or argumentative genre.

Christmas Persuasive Essay

•   There definitely is a Santa Claus. •   I definitely have been a very good boy or girl this year. •   Christmas is a time to be thinking of others. •   Presents are very important on Christmas Day. •   Presents should not be important on Christmas Day. •   We should have the Christmas spirit all year round. •   How getting everything on my Christmas wish list would make the world a better place. •   Christmas is a time to be thankful and for reflection. •   We should have Christmas twice a year!

Christmas Process Essay or How-To Essay

•   A kid’s perfect minute-by-minute plan for Christmas Day. •   The correct way to open Christmas presents. •   How to buy the perfect Christmas present for someone. •   How to make Christmas a special day for the entire family. •   How to prepare for Christmas Day. •   How to wrap a Christmas present. •   Santa’s complete process from getting started until delivering his very last present. •   How to decorate for Christmas.

Christmas Argumentative Essay

•   There should be absolutely no arguing on Christmas Day. •   Christmas is the best holiday of them all. •   The real meaning of Christmas is _______ •   The Christmas spirit is alive and well.

Christmas Evaluation Essay

•   What is the effect that Christmas has on society? •   Has the meaning of Christmas changed over time? •   What would Jesus think of Christmas today? •   Has Christmas become too commercialized?

Christmas Narrative/ Personal Narrative Essay

•   A wonderful Christmas memory. •   My favorite present I ever GAVE. •   Christmas shopping with my family. •   My favorite part of Christmas. •   Family time on Christmas. •   Christmas traditions in my family. •   The best Christmas ever. •   Funny happenings on Christmas day. •   Memorable presents.

Christmas Cause and Effect Essay

•   How I feel when I give on Christmas Day. •   How the birth of Jesus affected our world. •   How the Christmas spirit affects people’s behavior and attitude. •   Preparations for Christmas Day and the outcomes of all that hard work. •   What effect does all the Christmas media promotion have?

Christmas Expository/Informational Essay

•   The real truth about Santa Claus. The history of Santa Claus. •   The history of Christmas. •   Christmas through the ages. •   Christmas traditions. •   Facts about Christmas. •   The symbols and symbolism of Christmas. •   The first Christmas.

Christmas Descriptive Essay

•   Describe opening presents. •   How I felt opening presents, eating delicious food, and spending time with family and friends. •   Describe the Christmas spirit or Christmas energy. •   Describe who you celebrate Christmas with. What makes them unique or special to celebrate with? •   Describe the sights, sounds, and smells of when you first walk out to the tree on Christmas morning. •   Describe how the anticipation and excitement of Christmas makes you feel. •   Describe the sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas.

Christmas Five-Paragraph Essay

•   Three reasons… •   Three signs… •   Three presents… •   Three traditions… •   Three signs that Christmas is just around the corner. •   Three reasons I love Christmas.

Christmas Compare and Contrast Essay

•   Christmas now compared to Christmas when I was “young.” •   What used to be important to me about Christmas compared to what is important about Christmas to me now. •   The day before Christmas, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas. •   Giving vs. receiving. •   Christmas for kids compared to Christmas for adults. •   Christmas traditions in different cultures. •   Christmas without Santa Claus compared to Christmas with Santa Claus.

Christmas Story Ideas

•   A Christmas miracle. •   The greatest present ever. •   People in need on Christmas. •   The real story of Christmas. •   The day after Christmas. •   The day I met Santa Claus. •   Wooah…CRASH… Santa? •   Wow… Look at that star!

Be sure to check out the “Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay” writing program at the home page. Also, be sure to download your FREE 59-page “Guide to Writing” once you get to the homepage!

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Over 15 years of creating writing success for beginning and struggling writers of all ages, the fastest, most effective way to teach students clear and organized multi-paragraph writing… guaranteed, create academic and professional success today by improving your critical thinking, logical arguments, and effective communication.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, a christmas story.

Now streaming on:

There are many small but perfect moments in "A Christmas Story," and one of the best comes after the Lifebouy is finally removed from Ralphie's mouth and he is sent off to bed. His mother studies the bar, thinks for a moment, and then sticks it in her own mouth, just to see what it tastes like. Moments like that are why some people watch "A Christmas Story" every holiday season. There is a real knowledge of human nature beneath the comedy.

The movie is based on the memoirs of Jean Shepherd, the humorist whose radio programs and books remembered growing up in Indiana in the 1940s. It is Shepherd's voice on the soundtrack, remembering one Christmas season in particular, and the young hero's passionate desire to get a Daisy Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action BB Gun for Christmas--the one with the compass in the stock, "as cool and deadly a piece of weaponry as I had ever laid eyes on."

I owned such a weapon. I recall everything about it at this moment with a tactile memory so vivid I could have just put it down to write these words. How you stuffed newspapers into the carton it came in to use it for target practice. How the BBs came in a cardboard tube with a slide-off top. How they rattled when you poured them into the gun. And of course how everybody warned that you would shoot your eye out.

Ralphie's life is made a misery by that danger. He finds that nobody in northern Indiana (not his mother, not his teacher, not even Santa Claus) is able to even think about a BB gun without using the words "shoot your eye out." At one point in the movie, in a revenge daydream, he knocks on his parents' door with dark glasses, a blind man's cane and a beggar's tin cup. They are shocked, and ask him tearfully what caused his blindness, and he replies coolly, "Soap poisoning."

The movie is not only about Christmas and BB guns, but also about childhood, and one detail after another rings true. The school bully, who, when he runs out of victims, beats up on his own loyal sidekick. The little brother who has outgrown his snowsuit, which is so tight that he walks around looking like the Michelin man; when he falls down he can't get up. The aunt who always thinks Ralphie is a 4-year-old girl, and sends him a pink bunny suit. Other problems of life belong to that long-ago age and not this one: clinkers in the basement coal furnace, for example, or the blowout of a tire. Everybody knows what a flat tire is, but many now alive have never experienced a genuine, terrifying loud instantaneous blowout.

"A Christmas Story" was released in the Christmas season of 1983, and did modest business at first (people don't often go to movies with specific holiday themes). It got warm reviews and two Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscars) for Bob Clark's direction and for the screenplay. And then it moved onto home video and has been a stealth hit season after season, finding a loyal audience. "Bams," for example, one of the critics at the hip Three Black Chicks movie review Web site, confesses she loves it: "How does one describe, in short form, the smiles and shrieks of laughter one has experienced over more than 15 years of seeing the same great movie over and over, without sounding like a babbling, fanboyish fool who talks too much?"

The movie is set in Indiana but was filmed mostly around Toronto, with some downtown shots from Cleveland, by Clark, whose other big hits were " Porky's " and " Baby Geniuses ." It is pitch-perfect, telling the story through the enthusiastic and single-minded vision of its hero Ralphie, and finding in young Peter Billingsley a sly combination of innocence and calculation.

Ralphie's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Parker, are played by Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon , and they exude warmth, zest and love: They are about the nicest parents I can remember in a non-smarmy movie. Notice the scene where Mrs. Parker gets her younger son, Randy, to eat his food by pretending he is "mommy's little piggie." Watch the delight in their laughter together. And the enthusiasm with which the Old Man (as he is always called) attacks the (unseen) basement furnace, battles with the evil neighbor dogs and promises to change a tire in "four minutes flat--time me!" And the lovely closing moment as the parents tenderly put their arms around each other on Christmas night.

Some of the movie's sequences stand as classic. The whole business, for example, of the Old Man winning the "major award" of a garish lamp in the shape of a woman's leg (watch Mrs. Parker hiding her giggles in the background as he tries to glue it together after it is "accidentally" broken). Or the visit by Ralphie and Randy to a department store Santa Claus, whose helpers spin the terrified kids around to bang them down on Santa's lap, and afterward kick them down a slide to floor level. Or the sequence where a kid is not merely dared but Triple-Dog-Dared to stick his tongue onto a frozen lamp post, and the fire department has to be called. And the deep disillusionment with which Ralphie finally gets his Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring in the mail, and Annie's secret message turns out to be nothing but a crummy commercial.

There is also the matter of Scut Farcas (Zack Ward), the bully, who Ralphie assures us has yellow eyes. Every school has a kid like this, who picks on smaller kids but is a coward at heart. He makes Ralphie's life a misery. How Farcus gets his comeuppance makes for a deeply satisfying scene, and notice the perfect tact with which Ralphie's mom handles the situation. (Do you agree with me that Dad already knows the whole story when he sits down at the kitchen table?)

In a poignant way, "A Christmas Story" records a world that no longer quite exists in America. Kids are no longer left unattended in the line for Santa. The innocence of kids' radio programs has been replaced by slick, ironic children's programming on TV. The new Daisy BB guns have a muzzle velocity higher than that of some police revolvers, and are not to be sold to anyone under 16. Nobody knows who Red Ryder was, let alone that his sidekick was Little Beaver.

So much has been forgotten. There is a moment when the Old Man needs an answer for the contest he is entering. The theme of the contest is "Characters in American Literature," and the question is: "What was the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse?"

Victor, of course. Everybody knows that.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

A Bit of Light

Peyton robinson.

Sweet Dreams

Matt zoller seitz.

Dusk for a Hitman

Robert daniels.

Christy Lemire

The Listener

The Sympathizer

Nandini balial, film credits.

A Christmas Story (1983)

Latest blog posts.

Speed Kills: On the 25th Anniversary of Go

Joanna Arnow Made Her BDSM Comedy for You

The Movies That Underwent Major Changes After Their Festival Premiere

Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives Is A Spinoff Stuck In Limbo

A Christmas Story (Transcript)

• View history

[The film begins outside of a house on Cleveland street and we see Ralphie along with his friends Flick and Schwartz and his younger brother Randy.]

Adult Ralphie: Ah, there it is. My house. And good old Cleveland Street. How could I ever forget it? And there I am, with that dumb round face and that stupid stocking cap. But no matter. Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas around which the entire kid year revolved. Downtown Hohman was prepared for its yearly bacchanalia of peace on earth and good will to men. Higbees' corner window was traditionally a high-water mark of the pre-Christmas season. First nighters, packed earmuff to earmuff, jostled in wonderment before a golden tinkling display of mechanized, electronic joy. [Ralphie stands by a window and looks at a red ryder section.] Wow, there it is. The holy grail of Christmas gifts. The Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle. And there he is. Red Ryder himself. In his hand was the knurled stock of as coolly deadly-looking a piece of weaponry as ever I had laid eyes on. For weeks, I had been scheming to get my mitts on one of these fearsome blue-steel beauties. [Ralphie lays on his bed thinking.] My fevered brain seethed with the effort of trying to come up with the infinitely subtle devices necessary to implant the Red Ryder range model air rifle indelibly into my parents' subconscious.

[From downstairs.] Ralphie! Randy! Down here in two minutes! And I mean two minutes! [They both go to their drawer.]

[Ralphie cuts in front of Randy.] Come on, Ralphie. I got here first!

[Starts hitting and kicking Ralphie.]

Cut it out. Tough!

Adult Ralphie: [Ralphie enters his parents bedroom.] My mother, grabbing for her copy of Look magazine. [chuckles] would find herself cleverly trapped into reading a Red Ryder sales pitch. [Puts the magazine for the Red Ryder BB Gun in his mom's magazine and puts it on his dad's bed.]

They traded Bullfrog. I don't believe it.

What's that?

Well, for Christ's sake, the Sox traded Bullfrog... the only player they've got, for Shottenhoffer. "Four Eyes" Shottenhoffer, a utility infielder. Got a whole goddamned team of utility infielders.

That's nice. Ralphie, on the double!

[Walks into the kitchen and hears his parents talking.] Did you hear about this guy who swallowed a yo-yo?

Swallowed a yo-yo?

On a bet. Some clodhopper down in Griffith, Indiana.

They write the silliest things in the newspapers.

What do you mean, silly? I mean that's real news. That's not like that politics slop. What is the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse?

Victor. His name is Victor.

How the hell did you know that?

Everybody knows that. That's another one of your silly puzzles?

Yeah, it's another one of our silly puzzles. Could be worth $50,000.

What kind is it this time?

Name the great characters in American literature.

Victor? The Lone Ranger's nephew's horse?

Adult Ralphie : Meanwhile, I struggled for exactly the right BB gun hint. It had to be firm, but subtle.

Flick says he saw some grizzly bears near Pulaski's candy store. [Staring at Ralphie in surprise.]

Adult Ralphie: They looked at me as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. I could tell that I was in imminent danger of over-playing my hand. Casually, I switched tactics.

Hey, Dad! I'll bet you'll never guess what I got you for Christmas.

A new furnace.

[Laughs] That's a good one, Dad. [Randy laughs,]

Adult Ralphie : My old man was one of the most feared furnace-fighters. in northern Indiana.

Hurry up, you're going to be late for school.

Yeah. I'm running late already.

Adult Ralphie: Round one was over. Parents, one. Kids, zip. I could feel the Christmas noose beginning to tighten. Maybe what happened next was inevitable.

Ralphie, what would you like for Christmas?

Adult Ralphie : Horrified, I heard myself blurt it out.

Ralphie: I want an official Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. [Realizes he made a mistake] Oooh!

No. Shoot your eye out.

Adult Ralphie: Oh, no! It was the classic mother-BB gun block. "You'll shoot your eye out." That deadly phrase uttered many times before by hundreds... of mothers was not surmountable... by any means known to kid-dom. But such was my mania, my desire for a Red Ryder carbine... that I immediately began to rebuild the dike.

[Laughs] I was just kidding. Even though Flick is getting one. I'd just like some Tinkertoys.

Adult Ralphie : I couldn't believe my own ears. Tinkertoys? She'd never buy it.

BB guns are dangerous. I don't want anyone shooting his eye out. Randy, will you eat? There are starving people in China. [Randy groans and shoves the cereal in his mouth.]

[Ralphie thinks to himself]

Adult Ralphie: Mothers know nothing about creeping marauders... burrowing through the snow toward the kitchen... where only you, and you alone, stand between your tiny... huddled family and insensate evil.

[Black Bart and his gang enter the yard of the Parker's home, and Ralphie's family yells for help. Ralphie comes in the kitchen, wearing cowboy clothing and carrying a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200 Shot Range Model Air Rifle.]

Mother: Save us, Ralphie! I just knew those bad guys would be coming for us in the end! Boo hoo hoo!

Ralphie: Don't worry, Dad. As long as I got OI' Blue... What've we got here, folks?

Father: Well, we figure it's Black Bart, Ralphie.

Ralphie: Well, I just me and my trusty old Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle. Lucky, I've got a compass in the stock. Well, I think I better have a look here.

[The guys get closer and Ralphie's BB gun appears at the window.]

Bart: Oh, no!

All: It's OI' Blue! Oh, no!

[Ralphie spits.] Cheese it, boys! The jig is up!

[He shoots the first guy. He groans. He shoots the second guy, he groans.]

There's another one! He's a dead-eye, ain't he?

[He shoots the third guy, and he groans, and Black Bart looks at Ralphie and speaks.]

Bart: Okay, Ralphie! You win! This time, but, we'll be back!

[Ralphie spits again.] Adios, Bart. But, if you do come back, you'll be pushing up daisies!

[The guys Ralphie shot, lay on the ground dead each have x marks over their eyes.]

[Like Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel Never Help The Devil] And don't you forget it! [Ralphie spits again and his parents celebrate with joy.]

Old Man: [Happily] Well, son, you saved us!

Mom and Old Man: [With excitement] We were goners for sure! And you saved us!

Randy: [Happily] Hallelujah!

Oldsmobile!

A pile of junk! That goddamned Olds is froze up again!

Adult Ralphie: Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man.

That son of a b*tch would freeze up in the middle of summer on the Equator!

Little pitchers...

Hold it! It's a clinker! That blasted, stupid furnace.

[Walks down the stairs and falls the rest of the way down.]

Damn skates!

For Christ's sake, open up the damper, will you?

Who the hell turned it all the way down again?

Adult Ralphie : In the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity... that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan. Preparing to go to school was like getting ready... for extended deep-sea diving.

Ralphie: Come on, Mom, we're going to be late!

Just wait, Ralph!

Adult Ralphie: My kid brother looked like a tick about to pop.

[Randy starts wailing] What?

What is it?

[Whining] I can't put my arms down!

Well, put your arms down when you get to school. [Randy wails and continues outside while The Old Man is in the basement and laughs angrily fighting the furance.]

[Ralphie meets up with Flick.] Hey, Flick! Wait up. Wait up!

So what are you doing?

[Jokingly] What does it look like I'm doing? Picking goobers?

[Schwartz comes outside to walk with Flick and Ralphie.] Hey, listen, smart ass. I asked my old man about sticking... your tongue to metal light poles in winter... and he says it will freeze right to the pole just like I told you.

Aw, Baloney! What would your old man know about anything?

He knows because he once saw a guy stick his tongue... to a railroad track on a bet and the fire department had to come... to get the guy's tongue off the track because he couldn't get it off.

[Randy can't catch up.]

Come on, guys, wait up!

Come on, guys!

Come on, guys, wait up! [Gets knocked down.] Hey, kid!

I can't get up!

[Starts rolling around.] I can't get up! Help! I can't get out! Help me!

Come on, Flick, wait up for me.

Get up. Sit up. Come on.

[Randy whines.] You're okay. Come on, let's go.

Come on, you're all right! [At school, the bell rings.]

[Ralphie, Flick, and Schwartz along with their classmates, are at the teacher's desk, as they get fake hillbilly teeth.] Miss Shields!

All right, everyone... take your seats, please.

[Writing on the board.] Good morning, class.

[With fake teeth with a funny voice.] Good morning, Miss Shields!

[She holds out her hand and the students give her the fake teeth.]

Open your books to Page 32.

And as you'll remember, Silas Marner...

[Outside, Flick Schwartz, Ralphie, and their classmates stand around a flagpole.] You're full of beans and so's your old man.

Oh, yeah? Yeah! Well, I double-dare you.

Adult Ralphie: The exact exchange and nuance...of phrase in this ritual is very important.

Are you kidding? Stick my tongue to that stupid pole? That's dumb.

That's 'cause you know it will stick!

You're full of it.

Well, I double dog-dare you!

Adult Ralphie : Now it was serious. A double dog-dare. What else was left but a "triple-dare you"? And finally, the coup de grace of all dares...the sinister triple dog-dare!

I triple dog-dare you! [Flick's smile turns to shock. And Ralphie looks on shocked.]

Adult Ralphie: Schwartz created a slight breach of etiquette...by skipping the triple-dare and going right for the throat.

All right, all right.

(Hits Flick on the back.) Go on, smart ass, and do it!

I'm going! I'm going!

Adult Ralphie: Flick's spine stiffened, his lips curled in a defiant sneer. There was no going back now. [Sticks his tongue to the pole.]

This is noth.... [Tries to pull off his tongue but he can't and realizes Schwartz was right.] Stuck? Stuck! [Starts screaming.] Stuck! Stuck! [Continues to scream and his classmates stare in surprise.]

Jeez! It really works!

Look at him!

[Ralphie gets ready to walk inside.] Ralphie, come back! Come back! Don't leave me! Come back!

But the bell rang!

What are we going to do?

I don't know! The bell rang! [Ralphie shrugs and he and Schwartz walk into the school. Flick continues saying come back.]

Where's Flick? Has anyone seen Flick?

Adult Ralphie: Flick? Flick who?

He was at recess, wasn't he? Ralphie, do you know where Flick is? [Ralphie shrugs.] I said has anyone seen Flick? [Esther Jane raises her hand.] Yes, Esther Jane? [She p oints to the window. Miss. Shields looks out the window and is shocked.] Oh, my God! [The students except Ralphie and Schwartz watch outside as the fire department enter the school.]

Holy cow, it's the fire department! [Ralphie looks down.] Oh no. [A few seconds later the cops enter.]

Wow, it's the cops! [Ralphie puts his head down.] [They finally get Flick off the flagpole. And the students cheer.]

[Miss Shields enters the classroom with Flick who has a bandage over his tongue.] Now, I know that some of you put Flick up to this. But, he has refused to say who. But those who did it know their blame. And I'm sure the guilt you feel... is far worse than any punishment you might receive. Now, don't you feel terrible? Don't you feel remorse for what you have done? That's all I'm going to say about poor Flick.

Adult Ralphie: Adults love to say things like that. But kids know better. We knew darn well it was always better not to get caught.

Now, boys and girls, I'm going to give you an assignment. I want you to write... a theme. [Students groan.] "What I want for Christmas."

Adult Ralphie: Ah ha! The clouds lifted.

And I want it handed in tomorrow morning...

Adult Ralphie : I saw a faint gleam of light at the other end of... the black cave of doom. I knew that when Miss Shields read my magnificent, eloquent theme... that she would sympathize with my plight... and everything would work out, somehow.

[After school, a pair of boots is seen behind the fence. Ralphie, Flick, Schwartz, and Randy walk home, and talk about the flagpole incident.] Boy, did you see how it stuck?

Ralphie: Did it hurt, Flick?

No. I never felt a thing. It just caught me off-guard.

You sure were bawling.

I never bawled!

Aw, Baloney.

[They hear laughing, and turn around as Scut Farkus peeks his head out the fence.]

Ralphie: Scut Farkus!

Adult Ralphie: Scut Farkus! What a rotten name. We were trapped. There he stood, between us and the alley. Scut Farkus, staring out at us with his yellow eyes. He had yellow eyes! So help me God, yellow eyes. [Scares them and they take off running. And suddenly Grover Dill appears and scares them.] Grover Dill, Farkus' crummy little toady. Mean. Rotten. His lips curled over his green teeth. Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense.

[Scut Farkus scares them again this time they escape, and he grabs Schwartz and twists his arm.] [Like Uncle Tex in The Flintstones Baby Barney] Say "uncle."

Louder! [As Flick and Ralphie help Randy up.]

[Screaming.] Uncle!

Adult Ralphie: In our world, you were either a bully, a toady or one of the nameless rabble of victims.

All right. Who's next? [Roars and scares them causing them to run away.]

[The boys are proud and punch each other. And Scut punches Grover Dill hard.] Ow! Man!

Adult Ralphie: In the jungles of kid-dom, the mind switches gears rapidly. Weeks ago I had sent away for my Little Orphan Annie... secret society decoder pen. Oh, skunked again. No matter. Today I had serious work to do.

"What I want for Christmas." "What I want is a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock... and this thing which tells time." Wow, that's great. "I think that everybody should have a Red Ryder BB gun. "They're very good for Christmas. "I don't think that a football's a very good Christmas present."

Adult Ralphie: Oh, rarely had the words poured from my penny pencil... with such feverish fluidity.

Father: I've won! I've won!

Ah! The Bumpus hounds. [Hums Charge.]

Adult Ralphie: Our hillbilly neighbors, the Bumpuses, had at least... 785 smelly hound dogs. And they ignored every other human being on earth. But, my old man.

I won! I won!

A major prize!

Hey, look at that. Look at that. A Western Union telegram. Tonight, he's coming tonight. Tonight. Hot damn, tonight!

What does this mean here?

It means it's coming tonight!

I called Ernie McClosky at the freight depot.

He said the telegram was late, the prize was already there... he was going to send it on tonight.

Come on. Have a chew, fellas, on me. It's my gift.

You know, maybe it'll be one of those Spanish adobe houses down in Coral...

Serves you right, you smelly buggers.

Or it could be a bowling alley.

A guy down in Terre Haute won a bowling alley.

How are they going to deliver a bowling alley here tonight?

They could send the deed, for cripesake. I mean...

I didn't expect they were going to send the whole damn bowling alley.

Yeah, well. How about eating? I'm starving to death.

Getting rich is hard work, kid. Come on.

Adult Ralphie : Every family has a kid who won't eat. My kid brother had not eaten voluntarily in over three years.

Oh, Randy, don't play with your food, eat it!

Starving people would be happy to have that.

Can I have some more red cabbage?

Stop playing with your food, or I'll give you something to cry about.

You better stop fooling around with it and eat it or you'll be sorry.

Can I please have some more?

Adult Ralphie: My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in 15 years.

Meatloaf, double beetloaf. I hate meatloaf.

All right. I'll get that kid to eat.

Where's my screwdriver and plumber's helper?

I'll open up his mouth and I'll shove it in.

Adult Ralphie: My mother was more subtle.

How do the little piggies go? [He snorts]

That's right. Oink, oink.

Now, show me how the piggies eat. This is your trough.

Show me how the piggies eat.

Be a good boy. Show Mommy how the piggies eat.

Oh, my. [They laugh and Ralphie and the old man look on with disgusted expressions.]

[Laughing happily] Mommy's little piggy. [The laughter stops. And suddenly a knock is heard.]

Are you Parker?

All right, sign here. [He does]

[Anxiously excited] Yeah. Well, what is it?

[Replies] I don't know.

What's in it? [The delivery man shrugs like Ginger Grant in President Gilligan, Angel on the Island, and The Sweepstakes from Gilligan's Island.]

Here. Bring it in.

Okay, boys. Haul that on in here. Move your tails.

Bring it right on in. Right here. Bring it ahead. Straight ahead.

That's right.

Here, bring it right in, fellas. That's it. Here we go.

A little more. Little more.

Watch the lady.

Thanks a lot, guys.

[As they leave.] Merry Christmas.

Get the crowbar and a hammer, Ralphie. Go on.

[Mispronouncing] "Fra-gi-ley."

That must be Italian.

[Correcting him] I think that says "fragile."

Here we go.

They did a job on this, you know?

No, here, Ralph, hold this.

There could be anything in there!

Maybe they forgot.

It's in there. It's gotta be in there.

Would you look at that?

It's a leg!

But what is it?

Well, it's a leg. You know, like in a statue.

Yeah, statue!

Adult Ralphie: My mother was trying to insinuate herself between us and the statue.

Holy smoke, would you...

Do you know what this is? This is a lamp.

Adult Ralphie: It was indeed a lamp.

Isn't that great? What a great lamp!

I don't know.

Here, hold it. Hold it. Here, go on.

Adult Ralphie: The old man's eyes boggled...overcome by art.

I know just the place for it. Right in the middle of our front room window!

Jesus, God.

No. It's all right.

Let's see...

This goes to the radio and this goes to the...

Well, it's just one too many.

Well, let's see.

Adult Ralphie: The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone... and the lamp blazed forth in unparalleled glory.

Look at that! Will you look at that?

Isn't that glorious?

It's indescribably beautiful. It reminds me of the Fourth of July! Turn off all the lights. I wanna see what it looks like from the street.

I'll go get the dining room.

Couldn't we talk this over?

Move it a little bit to the right. A little that way.

Just a little... More to the right.

Yeah. More. That's it. No, stop!

Right there. That's wonderful.

Parker, what is that?

Don't bother me now Swede. Can't you see I'm busy?

Yeah, but what is that?

It's a major award.

A major award?

Shucks, I wouldn't have known that. It looks like a lamp.

It is a lamp, you nincompoop. But it's a major award. I won it.

Damn, hell, you say you won it?

Yeah. Mind power, Swede, mind power.

Adult Ralphie: The entire neighborhood was turned on.

You should see what it looks like from out here!

Adult Ralphie: It could be seen up and down Cleveland Street. The symbol of the old man's victory.

Yeah, he won that. It's a major award.

[To both Ralphie and Randy] Isn't it about time for somebody's favorite radio program?

Ralphie: [Happy] yeah!

[Ralphie and Randy sit on the floor and get the radio ready]

Adult Ralphie: Holy smokes, it was 6:45. Only one thing that could've dragged me away... [Ralphie turns the radio on] from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window.

[Ralphie turns up the volume] On the radio: “Who’s the little chatterbox? The one with pretty auburn locks? Who do you see? It’s little orphan Annie!”

Adult Ralphie: [The song is heard from outside] Kids, it's Little Orphan Annie time. Brought to you by rich, chocolaty Ovaltine. I could still taste it.

Hey, you turned the light off!

[Ralphie, Flick, Schwartz, and Randy run from Scut and Grover.]

Randy: Come on you guys wait up!

[The students and Ralphie turn in their themes]

Adult Ralphie: I knew I was handing Miss Sheilds a master piece. Maybe Miss Shields, in her ecstasy, would excuse me from theme writing... for the rest of my natural life. [The fantasy begins, Miss. Shields grades her students' themes and gives them Fs.]

"F!" You call this a paragraph? Margins! Margins! "F"!

My life's work down the drain. A semicolon, you dolt! A period.

"F"! Oh, I should weep if I have to read one more "F"!

Ralphie Parker. Ha! [Looks at his theme, and clutches it to her chest.]

Oh! The theme I've been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence. "A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock... "and this thing which tells time." Poetry. [Close to tears of joy] Sheer poetry. Ralph, an "A+." [Writes an A+ on his theme.] My Ralph! Oh, Ralphie, you've made me proud. [Starts writing A+ on the board along with Ralphie's name.]

"A+"! [Students cheer and lift up Ralphie as Miss Shields continues to write an A+.] Ralph? Ralphie? Ralph! [The students giggle.]

Is there something you want, Ralph?

I'm just turning in my theme.

Well, you can take your seat now. [The students continue to giggle as Ralphie sits down.]

Take your seat. [The giggles continue.]

[The kids run from Scut and Grover and Randy can’t catch up.]

Randy: Come on, you guys. Wait up!

[That evening, after dinner, the family goes to get a tree.] Get in the car. Get in the car.

[Calling to the others] If we don't hurry we're going to miss all the good trees!

Adult Ralphie: My mother was about to make another brilliant maneuver in the legendary battle of the lamp. The epic struggle which followed lives in the folklore of Cleveland Street... to this very day.

[Turns off the lamp.] Don't want to waste electricity.

[Mockingly.] "Don't want to waste electricity."

Come on, Ralphie. Get in the car.

You folks looking for a tree? We got 300 trees. This is the Christmas tree emporium of the entire Midwest. Now, you ain't gonna find no better tree than this here tree. This here tree is built to last. Ain't no needles coming off this here tree. Okay. Now here's a tree. This here is a tree.

That's a little skimpy in the front.

Well, you just put it in the corner.

Haven't you got a big tree?

Hell, this ain't no tree. Now here's a tree. This here is a tree.

Wait'll the dogs see that one.

Don't you think it's a little large?

Listen, Christmas only comes once a year. Why not?

I'll knock off $2... because I can see you're a man who knows his trees.

This isn't one of those trees that all the needles falls off, is it?

No, that's them balsams.

Adult Ralphie: The old man loved bargaining as much as an Arab trader... and he was twice as shrewd.

You know, Dew Lock just bought one of those brand new... green plastic trees.

Darn thing looks like it was made out of...green pipe cleaners. [They both laugh.]

This is a very nice tree.

I'll throw in some rope and tie it to your car for you.

You got a deal.

The Parkers (except The Old Man who drives.): Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way! Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh hey! Jingle Bells Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way! Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh! [The three of them blow raspberries and Randy laughs.]

Damn it. Blow out!

Four minutes! Time me.

Adult Ralphie : Actually, my old man loved it. He always saw himself in the pits at the Indianapolis Speedway... in the 500. My old man's spare tires were actually only tires... in the academic sense. They were round. They had once been made of rubber.

Ralphie, why don't you go help your father?

[Excited] Really? Can I?

Watch the traffic, there.

Adult Ralphie: It was the first time that it had been suggested that... I go help my father with anything.

What are you doing here?

Ralphie: Mom says I should help.

Okay, sit down here. Squat down. Yeah, that's it. Here. Hold this. No, not that way. Come on, rat trap, hold it like this.

Like this. I want to put the nuts in it. There we are. There's four of them. And we got it! There it is. That son of a gun. I'm gonna get that dirty... There we go.

Adult Ralphie: Oh! For one brief moment, I saw all the bolts silhouetted against the lights of the traffic. And then they were gone.

Ralphie: [Slow motion] Oh, fudge!

Adult Ralphie: [The Old Man is surprised] Only I didn't say "fudge." I said the word. The big one. The queen mother of dirty words. The "f, dash, dash, dash" word.

What did you say?

That's what I thought you said.

Get in the car.

Adult Ralphie: It was all over. I was dead. What would it be? The guillotine? Hanging? The chair? The rack? The Chinese water torture? Mere child's play compared to what surely awaited me.

Everything go all right?

Eight minutes.

Do you know what your son just said?

I'll tell you what he said. Randy! [Whispers the word in her ear.]

[She is shocked and screams.] Ah! Ralphie!

[At home, Ralphie sits on the toilet in the bathroom with soap in his mouth and is disgusted.]

Adult Ralphie: Over the years, I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. My personal preference is for Lux, but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant, after-dinner flavor. Heady, but with just a touch of mellow smoothness. Lifebuoy, on the other hand...

Ralphie: Yuck!

You ready to tell me?

[Mumbles yes.]

All right. Where did you hear that word?

Adult Ralphie: Now I had heard that word at least ten times a day from my old man. My father worked in profanity the way... other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium. A master. But I chickened out. And I blurted out the first name that came to mind.

Oh, I see. [Mumbles and yells.]

[Dials Mrs. Schwartz Schwartz's mom.] Hello, Mrs. Schwartz? Yes, I'm fine.

[Ralphie watches her on the phone.] Mrs. Schwartz, do you know what Ralph just said?

He said... [Whispers the word into the phone.]

[Surprised.] No! Not that!

Do you know where he heard it?

Probably from his father.

No! He heard it from your son!

[Screaming hysterically.] What? What? Whaaaattttt! [Walks over to Schwartz and beats him up.]

[As his mom beats him up.] Ah, oh no! What'd I do, Mom?

Why? I didn't do nothing! [Whines and bawls.]

Adult Ralphie: Another shot of mysterious, inexorable, official justice.

[Takes the soap out of Ralphie's mouth.] Rinse out and go to bed. Oh, am I glad you finished your homework this afternoon! I want you getting right into bed, and I don't want to see any lights on. You are being punished, so no comic book reading! I'll come in, and if any lights are on... And. [Angrily] Don't you give me that look! You're gonna get it! [Sees the soap and puts it into her own mouth.] Ew! [Spits.]

[Ralphie lays in bed with tears on his cheeks silently weeping.]

Adult Ralphie: Three blocks away, Schwartz was getting his. There has never been a kid who didn't believe vaguely but insistently, that he would be stricken blind... before he reached 21. And then they'd be sorry. [Ralphie's bottom lip goes out as the daydream begins.]

[Ralphie goes to the door with the cane and knocks on the door.] Why, it's Ralph!

[Happily] Well, come on in, Ralph. Where've you been?

Why, he's carrying a cane!

What is it, Ralph? What happened?

Why, he's blind!

Blind? Oh, my God!

Ralph, is it something we did?

What brought you to this lonely state?

Ralph, please tell us no matter how it hurts. What did we do?

Look, I can't.

Please, Ralph. I must know what we did. What brought you to this?

It.... It was.... Soap poisoning. [The Old Man and Mom break down and sob.]

Oh, how could we do it?

Well, I'll manage to get along, somehow.

[Like The Skipper in Gilligan's Island A Nose by Any Other Name] I'll never forgive myself.

Thanks, Mom. [She nods.]

[Still sobbing.] I told you not to use Lifebuoy.

I feel awful! [Ralphie smiles. And does the same in reality.]

[Ralphie Flick Schwartz and Randy run from Scut and Grover.]

Thank you, Heather.

Merry Christmas.

Thank you, Flick.

Merry Christmas, Miss Shields. [Miss Shields sees a fruit basket.]

[Ralphie enters with a fruit basket. Miss. Shields is surprised.] I just thought that you'd be getting tired of the same old stuff.

Adult Ralphie: Yes, truly, a little bribe never hurts.

Well, thank you very much, Ralph. [He smiles and winks.]

Merry Christmas. [He nods.]

Happy New Year. [He nods again.]

You can take your seat now, Ralph. [He walks back to his desk and winks at Miss. Shields.]

[The kids run from Scut and Grover. And Ralphie runs to the mailbox.]

Adult Ralphie: The weeks of drinking gallons of Ovaltine, in order to get... the Ovaltine inner seal to send off for my Little Orphan Annie... secret decoder pen, was about to pay off.

I got it. "Master Ralph Parker." My decoder pen! All right!

"Be it known to all that Ralph Parker is hereby appointed... a member of the Little Orphan Annie secret circle and... is entitled to all the honors and benefits occurring there too."

Adult Ralphie: Signed, Little Orphan Annie. Countersigned, Pierre Andre! In ink! Honors and benefits. Already at the age of nine. [Pirates yelling on the radio is heard.] Come on. Let's get on with it. I don't need all that jazz about smugglers and pirates.

Listen tomorrow night for the concluding adventure of. The Black Pirate Ship. Now it's time... for Annie's secret message for you members of the secret circle. Remember, kids, only members of... Annie's secret circle can decode Annie's secret message. Remember, Annie is depending on you. Set your pins to B-2. Here is the message. 12. 11. 2...

Adult Ralphie: I am in my first secret meeting.

...25. 14. 11. 18. 16. 23...

Adult Ralphie : Pierre was in great voice tonight. I could tell that tonight's message was really important.

...3. 25. That's a message from Annie herself. Remember, don't tell anyone.

Adult Ralphie : Ninety seconds later I'm in the only room in the house... where a boy of nine can sit in privacy and decode. Ah! "B." I went to the next. "E." The first word is "be"! "S." It was coming easier now. "U."

[Randy calls from the outside.] Come on, Ralphie! I gotta go.

[Calling to his mom.] I'll be right down, Ma.

[To himself.] Gee whiz.

Adult Ralphie: "T. O." "Be sure to." Be sure to what? What was Little Orphan Annie trying to say? Be sure to what?

[Shouting from downstairs.] Ralphie! Randy has got to go! Will you please come out?

[Shouting as he gets annoyed.] All right, Ma! I'll be right out!

Adult Ralphie: I was getting closer now. The tension was terrible. What was it? The fate of the planet may hang in the balance.

[Yelling from downstairs.] Ralphie! Randy's gotta go!

[Shouting.] I'll be right out, for crying out loud!

Adult Ralphie: Almost there! My fingers flew. My mind was a steel trap. Every pore vibrated. It was almost clear. Yes!

[Sees the message.] "Be sure to drink your ovaltine?" "Ovaltine?" A crummy commercial? [Under his breath.] Son of a b***h!

[Ralphie exits the bathroom as Randy enters the bathroom.]

Adult Ralphie: I went out to face the world again. Wiser.

[Lifts the pot and sees the food.] Red cabbage?

I don't know, that's for tomorrow night. You love red cabbage, Ralphie.

You filthy system!

Schmucker! Smelly watt-buster!

Adult Ralphie: What happened next was a family controversy for years. [Suddenly a loud crash is heard.]

What was that? What happened? [Ralphie shrugs.] [Enters the living room and sees.] What happened? What broke?

[Mrs. Parker is holding the broken leg lamp.] I don't know what happened. I was watering my plant and... I broke your lamp. [Walks over to collect the broken lamp.]

Don't you touch that! You were always jealous of this lamp.

Jealous of a plastic leg? [Interrupts her.]

Jealous! Jealous because I won.

That's ridiculous! Jealous? Jealous of what? That is... the ugliest lamp I have ever seen in my entire life!

Adult Ralphie: Now it was out.

Get the glue.

We're out of glue.

[Angrily Grimaces] You used up all the glue on purpose!

Adult Ralphie: The old man stood quivering with fury... stammering as he tried to come up with a real crusher.

All he got out was: Not a finger! [Exits to find tape.]

[The Old Man tries to fix the leg lamp and it ends up breaking. Mrs. Parker laughs to herself.]

Adult Ralphie: With as much dignity as he could muster...the old man gathered up the sad remains...of his shattered major award. Later that night, alone in the backyard...he buried it next to the garage. Now I could never be sure...but I thought that I heard the sound of taps being played...gently. [Leaves to bury the leg lamp, as "Taps" is heard in the background.]

[On the way to school, Ralphie, Flick, and Schwartz walk together and Schwartz tells him what he's getting his dad for Christmas.] Know what I'm getting my old man for Christmas?

A rose that squirts.

People come to smell it, it squirts them.

I'm getting my old man a Flit gun.

A Flit gun? [Scut Farkus scares the boys and they scream.]

[Grover Dill enters and stops the friends.] Stop right there!

Adult Ralphie: Ordinarily, if Dill so much as said "hi" to you, you felt great... warm inside. But mostly he just hit you in the mouth.

[Ralphie is shocked] Who me?

Yeah you! Get over here!

Ralphie: I can't now, Grover. I've gotta go see Miss Shields. [He and Schwartz run away.]

Hey, come here! Get over here!

Come on, you! Hey, come here!

You! Come here!

No, your Aunt Tilly.

Yeah, you. Get over here!

Adult Ralphie: I left Flick to certain annihilation. But BB gun mania knows no loyalties.

Uncle! Uncle!

All right, class.

I have your Christmas themes for you.

I'm pleased.

In general, you did very well. [Flick comes in with a black eye.]

However, I was disappointed in the margins.

This is it. [Opens his journal and sees....]

Adult Ralphie: "C+"? No, it can't be.

C+? [Imagines his teacher as The Wicked Witch of the West.]

C+! [Laughs] C+! [Continues cackling.]

Adult Ralphie: Oh, no! [Looks down and sees the note at the bottom and is shocked.] "You'll shoot your eye out"?

Adult Ralphie:My mother must have gotten to Miss Shields. There could be no other explanation.

[Sees his mother as the jester. And they both chant.] You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out! [Laughs.]

Adult Ralphie: Was there no end to this conspiracy of irrational prejudice... against Red Ryder and his peacemaker?

These multiplication questions were most missed in our last math test.

Would you answer in unison, please?

Adult Ralphie: I was surrounded by happier kids who were all going to get... what they wanted for Christmas.

...fifty-six.

[Ralphie walks outside after school, and is suddenly hit by a snowball.] [Scut and Grover laugh.] Hey, four-eyes!

How'd you like your snowball sandwich? [Continues laughing.]

Maybe you'd like another one! [Scut approaches Ralphie.]

Listen, jerk.

When I tell you to come, [Ralphie starts quivering.] You better come!

[Mockingly] What? Are you going to cry now?

Come on, cry baby, cry for me. Come on.

Cry! [Starts mocking Ralphie's crying.]

Adult Ralphie : Deep in the recesses of my brain... a tiny red-hot little flame began to grow.

[Ralphie has had enough and is getting angry, Scut continues laughing and mocking. Ralphie charges and starts slapping Farkus. Grover Dill is shocked.]

Grover: Hey!

Adult Ralphie: Something had happened. A fuse blew and I had gone out of my skull.

Grover: [Trying to help his friend.] Hey, hey kid! [Ralphie shoves him.] I'm telling my dad!

Hey, Ralphie! Alright Ralphie!

Beat him up! Beat him up!

[Randy picks up Ralphie's glasses as Ralphie starts swearing.]

[Listening to Ralphie.] Did you hear what he said?

[Ralphie continues to swear and Schwartz and Flick are surprised]

Schwartz: Holy smokes!

[Ralphie continues swearing and punching Scut as his nose bleed.]

Adult Ralphie: I have since heard of people under extreme duress speaking in strange tongues. I became conscious that a steady torrent of obscenities... And swearing of all kinds was pouring out of me as I screamed.

[Randy brings their mom toward the fight, and she is shocked by what she sees.]

Flick: Ralphie shhh! Your mother!

Ralphie! Ralphie! Ralphie! Ralphie! Ralphie! Ralphie Ralphie! Ralphie? [Ralphie sobs.] We're going home. Come on. [Takes Ralphie and Randy home.]

[Scut sits up with a bloody nose and sniffles.]

Flick: Uh oh!

[Scut wipes the blood.]

Schwartz: Let's go, man. Come on.

[Ralphie and mom walk up the stairs into the bathroom.] Calm down. Come on in here, Ralph. Get in there.

[Turning on the water in the sink.] Put your head down in here. Come on, get down in here. [Ralphie puts his head in the sink. And Mrs. Parker puts Ralphie's hat on the back of his neck.] Settle down. [Splashes water on Ralphie's face.]

I want you to go in there and lie down in your room for a while. Ralphie, just settle down. [Removes Ralphie's wet hat.] [Hands a towel to Ralphie.] Here, dry off. All right, calm down. [Finishes drying his face.] All right. Now go lie down. [Ralphie exits the bathroom, and heads to his bedroom. Ralphie enters his bedroom and lays down on his bed.]

[Ralphie sobs.]

Adult Ralphie: The light was getting purple and soft outside. Almost time for my father to come home from work.

[Mrs. Parker walks into the kitchen, and hears sobbing, she goes to the cupboard under the sink and opens the door.] Randy. Hi, what's the matter? What you crying for?

Randy: [Crying] Daddy's going to kill Ralphie!

No, he's not.

Yes, he is, too!

No, he's not. I promise you Daddy is not going to kill Ralphie. Why don't you come on out of there? [Randy shakes his head no.] No? Would you like some milk? [Randy nods yes.] You would? [Gets up and pours Randy a glass of milk.] [Hands Randy the glass of milk.] Here you go.

I'll see you later? Okay. Bye. [She shuts the door as Randy sobs.]

[Ralphie wipes his tears, and thinks he's gonna be in trouble.]

Adult Ralphie: I heard the car roar up the driveway, and a wave of terror broke over me. He'll know what I said, the awful things that I said.

Father: Get out of here! Go on home, you mangy mutts. Get out of here, you rotten, filthy... Hey, Bumpus! Get over here and get your stinking dogs!

[Ralphie looks out the window.] Hey, come on, what's for dinner? I'm starving to death.

[Mrs. Parker opens the door under the sink, and motions for Randy to come out. Ralphie enters the kitchen.]

Well, what happened today? [Sees Ralphie is not wearing his glasses.] Where's your glasses? [Waves her hand.] Did you lose your glasses again?

Uh, Ralphie? [Walks over to him.] [Hands his glasses over to him.] Remember, you left these on the radio again. Now try not to do that anymore.

[Ralphie puts his glasses back on.] So what else happened today?

Nothing much. Ralphie had a fight.

A fight? What kind of a fight?

You know how boys are. I gave him a talking to. I see that the Bears are playing Green Bay on Sunday.

Zudock's got tickets. I wish I had.

He'll freeze his keister off out there.

Adult Ralphie: I slowly began to realize I was not about to be destroyed.

The Chicago Bears. The terror of the midway.

Adult Ralphie: From then on, things were different between me and my mother.

More like the Chicago Chipmunks, maybe.

But Bears, never.

Adult Ralphie: Strange. Even something as monumental as "The Scut Farkus Affair"... as it came to be known...was pushed out of my mind as I struggled for a way out... of the impenetrable BB gun web... in which my mother had me trapped.

Santa! Yeah, I'll ask Santa.

Adult Ralphie: Of course! Santa. The big man. The head honcho. The connection. My mother had slipped up this time.

Randy: Mickey! Mickey!

The store's going to close soon and Santa will be gone.

Ralphie, Santa's not going anyplace. Just be still!

Mom, this is just the same old dumb parade as last year.

Ralphie, will you please calm down.

Shut up, Ralphie!

There he is!

Have you been a good boy? Have you?

Can we go now? Can we go?

Yes, we can go now.

Come on, Ralphie.

Merry Christmas!

Come on, Randy, hurry up.

Ralphie, look over there.

See, the line's not so long. Get in it.

Take Randy's hand and hold on to him. We'll see you later, okay?

Stay together, you hear? And don't get lost. Come on.

Just where do you think you're going?

We're going up to see Santa.

The line ends here. It begins there.

Come on, come up, boys and girls.

Adult Ralphie: The line waiting to see Santa stretched all the way back to Terre Haute! And I was at the end of it.

I like Santa.

Adult Ralphie: Let's face it. Most of us were scoffers. Moments before zero hour, it did not pay to take chances.

The chocolate snowman eats little boys.

My pretty...

What a tasty little boy.

Don't bother me. I'm thinking.

I like The Wizard of Oz.

Ralphie: Yeah.

I like the Tin Man.

If Higbee thinks I'm working one minute past 9:00, he can kiss my foot.

Come on up on Santa's lap.

There's a wet one. And what's your name, little boy?

Come on, Randy.

And what do you want for Christmas, Billy? A toy truck?

Get him off my lap.

Quick, get me a towel.

I hate the smell of tapioca.

Attention shoppers! It is now 9:00 and our store is closing.

Adult Ralphie: 9:00! Great Scott! The store is gonna close!

Santa can't wait all night.

Get moving, kid.

Quit dragging your feet.

Get him out of here.

Come on, kid.

Come on up.

And what's your name, little boy?

Hey, kid, hurry up, the store's closing!

Listen, little boy, we got a lot of people waiting here, so get going!

What do you want for Christmas, little boy?

Adult Ralphie : My mind had gone blank. Frantically I tried to remember what it was I wanted. I was blowing it, blowing it.

How about a nice football?

Adult Ralphie : Football. What's a football? Without conscious will, my voice squeaked out:

Okay, get him out of here.

Adult Ralphie: A football! Oh, no. What was I doing? Wake up, stupid, wake up!

Ralphie: I want an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot...range model air rifle.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

I'll see you in Oz, folks.

Well, did you see Santa Claus?

Did you tell him what you wanted for Christmas?

Did he ask you if you'd been a good boy all year?

Don't worry, he knows.

He always knows.

Okay, down you go.

Bye, Chris.

That's fine.

Now, wait a minute. All right. Plug her in!

Father: Well, the green string is out.

Mother: No, the green is on. It's the blue that's out.

Father: Oh, don't tell me what color it is. I'm not color blind.

Mother: I'm not color blind, either.

Father: There, see, I told you it was green. Hold it! Don't anybody move! Hold it right there! A fuse is out.

Adult Ralphie: The old man could replace fuses quicker than a jackrabbit on a date. He bought them by the gross.

My, isn't that pretty?

That son of a gun.

Yeah. No. That star is crooked.

That star is perfectly straight.

Oh, you've got to be careful.

It's just... Let me get it fixed. That's all right.

Oh, goodness, look at the time. I hope Santa hasn't had to pass up this house...just because some boys weren't in bed when he came by.

I thought I heard Santa's sleigh bells... a little while ago, going up the other side of the street.

All right, you two, upstairs.

Go on the double, on the double.

Okay, let's get them.

Randy, come on! Get up, Randy!

[Ralphie and Randy walk downstairs and Bing Crosby's music is heard]

Adult Ralphie: Santa Claus had come!

Wow! A truck! That's mine! Wow, look over here! That's mine! What's in here? It's hard. Fire truck. Oh boy, that's mine! Hey!

Does this raise? [The mom and The Old Man walk down the stairs.]

Merry Christmas, you two.

Randy, no. Wait for Christmas to start, honey. [Sits on the couch.]

I want to play Santa!

Well, wait a minute, Randy.

He played Santa last year, didn't he?

Ralphie, you play Santa this time.

Who should I start with?

Well, give Randy a present.

And, I think I see Aunt Clara's gift to you right over there. She always sends you such wonderful presents.

Give me mine, Ralphie! Come on.

Adult Ralphie: Christmas had come. Officially. We plunged into the cornucopia... quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.

Didn't I get a tie this year?

A zeppelin!

A can of Simonize.

Ralphie, what did Aunt Clara give you? Show everybody.

I don't want to.

Ralphie, show everybody what Aunt Clara gave you.

Adult Ralphie: Aunt Clara had for years labored under the delusion that... I was not only perpetually four years old, but also a girl.

She just always gives you the nicest things, Ralphie.

Oh, isn't that sweet?

Ralph, go upstairs and try it on you--

I don't want to!

Go upstairs right now and try on that present!

She went to all that trouble to make it! Now go on.

While Ralphie is changing, I'm going to play Santa Claus.

[Walks over to the tree and grabs a present.] Now, let me see what can I find.

Oh, I see something! Randy. [Hands him a gift.] This is for you, honey.

And this is for Daddy.

Here. [Drops a bowling ball on his lap.]

From me to you.

[High pitched voice.] Thanks a lot.

[Normal voice.] I wonder what it could be?

Only one way to find out, isn't there?

Well, it's a blue ball!

It's a bowling ball.

Thank you, darling.

Do you like it?

Yes, very much. Very much.

We're waiting.

Oh, come on, Mom.

Right now! [Reluctantly walks down and shows his costume.]

Adult Ralphie : Immediately my feet began to sweat as those two fluffy little bunnies, with the blue button eyes stared sappily up at me.

Come down here so I can see you better.

Adult Ralphie : I just hoped Flick would never spot them as the word of this humiliation could easily make life Warren G. Harding School a veritable hell.

[Sees it and is delighted.] Isn't that cute?

That is the most precious thing I've ever seen in my life. [Randy laughs.]

[Under his breath.] Shut up, Randy.

He looks like a deranged Easter bunny.

He does not!

He does, too.

He looks like a pink nightmare.

Are you happy wearing that? [Shakes his head no.] Do you want to take it off? [Ralphie nods his head.] You tell the kid to take it off.

You'll only wear it when Aunt Clara visits. Go on and take it off.

Take it off! [Ralphie runs upstairs to take off his bunny pajamas.]

[Ralphie sits with his parents on the couch as Randy sleeps on the floor.] My God, will you look at that mess? Who's going to clean the papers up?

Randy did it last year.

Well, he can do it again.

You know, this wine is not bad. It's not good either, but...

[Hands Ralphie the glass.] You want a sip? Yeah.

No, you don't.

Did you have a nice Christmas?

Yeah, pretty nice.

Did you get everything you wanted?

Well, almost.

Well, that's life.

Well, there's always next Christmas.

That's funny.

What's that over there behind the desk?

Behind the desk, against the wall over there.

Why don't you go check it out?

What did we put over there, honey?

Santa Claus probably put it.

Adult Ralphie: Oh, it was beautiful. I could hardly wait to try it out.

Do you know how to load it?

Be careful.

Don't. They run all over.

Close her up. Close it up.

Can I try it out, Ma? Can I?

But outside.

I still say those things are dangerous.

Put on your galoshes and your coat. It's cold out.

I had one when I was eight years old.

What if he hurts himself? [Ralphie runs past them.] Ralphie, your coat!

Don't shoot any animals or birds!

Except the Bumpuses' dogs!

Be careful, Ralphie!

Adult Ralphie: Now it is well known throughout the Midwest that the old man... is a turkey junkie. A bona fide garley turkicanus freak. A few days before Christmas... his eyes would begin to gleam with a wild and ravenous light.

Ralphie: Okay, Black Bart, now you get yours. [Shoots the first bullet, as it ricochets back hits his cheek and knocks off his glasses.]

Adult Ralphie: Oh, my God! I shot my eye out!

[Hears echoes in his head of everyone warning him.]

[From inside the kitchen.] Ralphie, you be careful of there don't shoot your eye out!

Adult Ralphie: She hadn't seen! She didn't know! My eye's all right. The BB must've hit my glasses. My glasses! [Realizes he's not wearing his glasses.] Oh, no! Where are my glasses? Few things brought such swift and terrible retribution... on a kid as a pair of busted glasses!

[The Old Man enters the kitchen to eat the turkey. And Mrs. Parker enters and catches him.]

Stop! [The Old Man runs away.]

[Ralphie searches for his glasses and hears a crunching sound.] Oh, no!

Adult Ralphi e: Oh, no! Pulverized.

Ralphie: [Picks his glasses up.] Oh, no!

Adult Ralphie: For a moment I thought, I'll fake it. They'll never know the lens is gone! Randomly, my mind evolved a spectacular plot. Let's see, an icicle! Falls off the garage and hits me in the eye! It would work. It had to work. Quickly, I whipped up some tears.

[Hears Ralphie crying.] Ralphie?

[Ralphie cries as Mrs. Parker opens the door.]

What's the matter, honey? Oh, what happened? [He runs up the stairs to the door.]

[Taking Ralphie's head into her hands as she looks at his injury.] What happened? What is it? Let me see that.

[Sobbing] There was this icicle and it fell off the garage and it hit me.

Come on out of the cold. What is it?

[Hears Ralphie sob.] What? No, it's okay. Just read your funnies. It's all right.

[As Ralphie and Mrs. Parker walk upstairs to the bathroom.] Randy? Wake up, Randy. [Randy is still sleeping on the floor.]

[Ralphie and Mrs. Parker walk into the bathroom.] It hit my cheek and it broke my glasses. [She takes a rag runs it under cold water squeezes the water out of it. And places it over the little bump.] And I tried to get out of the way, but I...

[Lifts up the edge of the washcloth as Ralphie sobs a little.] There. Oh, see, it's just a little bump. Ralphie, You're lucky it didn't cut your eye. Those icicles have been known to kill people.

Old man: [Walks into the kitchen, and hears Ralphie crying.] What's going on up there?

Nothing. We'll be right down. You stay away from that turkey! It's got an hour to cook. You'll get worms!

Ralphie: [Sadly] But what about my glasses?

Well, you can wear the old ones with the crack in them... until we get you some new ones. Okay?

[Looks at the camera and smiles.]

Adult Ralphie: I had pulled it off!

[Looks back at mom and continues pretending to be sad.] But I left my gun outside.

[Putting the medicine on the washcloth.] When you get dressed you can go out and get your gun. Hold that on there. [Places it back on Ralphie's cheek and smiles.]

Adult Ralphie: Life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our reveries, when our joy is at its zenith... when all is most right with the world... the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.

[The dogs are knock over the table and Mrs. Parker and Ralphie hear it.] What?

Oh, the turkey! Oh, my God! You are sons of b*tches! Bumpuses! [Mrs. Parker, Ralphie and Randy enter in shock.]

[As Mrs. Parker starts crying.]

Adult Ralphie: The heavenly aroma still hung heavy in the house. But, it was gone. All gone. No turkey, no turkey sandwiches, no turkey salad, no turkey gravy, turkey hash, turkey a la king... or gallons of turkey soup. Gone. All gone.

[Mrs. Parker covers her mouth and sobs. Ralphie hands her the washcloth. As she blows her nose.]

Father: All right. Everybody, upstairs. Get dressed. We are going out to eat.

[The waiters sing Deck the Halls in their Chinese voices.]

No! Not, "ra ra ra ra ra." "La la la la la." Sing like this: Deck The Halls with boughs of holly fa la la la la la la la la.

Try again. [Singing in their chinese voices.]

Sing something else.

[They decide to sing Jingle Bells in their chinese voices.]

Kitchen. Bring food. For customers.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It's a beautiful duck.

It really is.

But you see...

It's smiling at me.

Adult Ralphie: That Christmas would live in our memories... as the Christmas when we were introduced to Chinese turkey. All was right with the world.

Oh, honey, come over here. Look at this.

Is that beautiful! [She sighs with joy, and The Old Man hands her a wine glass, and they put their arms around each other.]

Adult Ralphie: Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue-steel beauty. The greatest Christmas gift. I had ever received... or would ever receive. Gradually, I drifted off to sleep, pranging ducks on the wing... and getting off spectacular hip shots.

• 1 Scott Farkus
• 2 Ralphie Parker
• 3 The Leg Lamp

Small Details You Missed In A Christmas Story Christmas

Christmas movies can be divided into two groups: the classics and everything else. And when it comes to classics (especially "modern classics"), few can rival "A Christmas Story." Its ability to capture the angst, fun, and frustration of the holidays, especially through the eyes of a child, is nearly unrivaled. If anything the biggest complaint people might have is that they've seen it so many times it's become blasé (no doubt in part because TBS airs it for 24 hours every Christmas).

For that reason, you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn't have its famous lines tattooed onto their brain ("You'll shoot your eye out" and "Fra-jil-E" are practically universal quotes by now). Its longstanding status as the gold standard makes "A Christmas Story" such a vehicle for nostalgia junkies everywhere that few Christmas fans can think about the season without flashing to memories of Ralphie's epic pursuit of a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. This is why HBO's sequel, "A Christmas Story Christmas," starring a grown Ralphie struggling to recreate the perfect Christmas for his own children, is guaranteed to elicit all the feels for any Christmasphile.

Even more, this holiday season you won't have to rewatch the original for the 40th (or 300th) time to get that mix of throwback humor, wonder, and satire that made the original so indelible. Though you probably will. Especially given all the little details, the Easter eggs, and references in "A Christmas Story Christmas" that you might miss if you don't have the original committed to memory.

Ralphie is still bribing people to like his writing

In "A Christmas Story," Ralphie thinks the way to get his parents to grant his wish of getting a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun is by writing an A+ essay about why it's the perfect gift. While he thinks his writing is strong, Ralphie also knows a bribe won't hurt. So while other kids get their teacher an apple, he gets her a fruit basket.

In the new movie, "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralphie is a struggling novelist. In his meeting with a publisher, he gives the publisher some candy that he admits is a bribe in his internal monologue. He even asks his manager later if the other publisher he was hoping would buy his book got the fruit basket he sent. As was the case back then, the bribes don't work. In the case of the publisher we see, the bribe just goes in the drawer with the other bribes in a shot similar to the one showing Ralphie's teacher had a similar drawer she puts her students' pranks in.

He still has over-the-top dreams

In "A Christmas Story," Ralphie has a lot of dreams about the future. His paper is such a success that his teacher raves about it and his classmates loft him on their shoulders as a great hero. On the other side, Ralphie sees a future where he goes blind because his mom punishes him by forcing him to put soap in his mouth.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralph sees a future where he wins a major literary award to the chagrin of the publisher who rejected him. And he sees a future where his Christmas Eve arrest turns his daughter into a teen mom and his son into a member of the Sex Pistols.

Then there's the Black Bart dream. In the original movie, young Ralphie saves everybody with his BB gun and Black Bart threatens to come back. In the new movie, Ralph takes on a Clint Eastwood vibe but can't save his family. In trying to protect them, he made them weak and falls in battle. Black Bart says they'll come back but Ralphie won't be there to protect the kids and wife. As an optimistic child, he's a hero; as a struggling grown-up, he fails.

He's different from Old Man Parker

"Some men are Baptists, others are Catholics, my father was an Oldsmobile man," Ralphie says in "A Christmas Story." In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralph drives an old Plymouth. Even more, his car is pretty beat-up while his Old Man had seen himself as a member of the pit crew in the Indy 500.

While there are some similarities, the differences seem to be more prevalent. There's the scene where adult Ralphie goes to buy a tree, attempting to emulate his Old Man's ability to negotiate the best price. Instead of getting a great deal, he accidentally buys the monster tree that the lot couldn't sell. Even more, while his dad is a model of 1940s middle-class success (the main breadwinner while the mom is a homemaker), Ralph is a struggling writer whose wife is supporting the family. Though many would say that's actually a sign of progress from the world of housewives and workingmen the original movie inhabits.

One thing stays the same, though: Ralphie is as devoted to his kids as the Old Man was.

The Rockwell-esque magazine images in his dream

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralphie has a daydream remembering all the perfect Christmases his Old Man presided over. They're basically a series of images of the family presented in Norman Rockwell-esque illustrations. Most are actually just recreations of Rockwell classics (like the opener, a redo of the famous Tiny Tim Saturday Evening Post cover). The montage is fleeting but important as it brings to mind the idea of living up to the old American Christmas dream. It also harkens to the look of the original poster.

The poster for "A Christmas Story" was illustrated by Robert Tanenbaum yet looked like one of Norman Rockwell's classic depictions of Americana. The 2012 sequel "A Christmas Story 2" also had a Rockwellian poster. It is appropriate that a movie that has had such a profound impact on American cinematic culture set during the heyday of "The Greatest Generation" adopted a Norman Rockwell aesthetic in its promotions. Even more, it's fitting that Ralph's daunting attempt to encapsulate and recreate these moments was referenced through these classic illustrations.

Ralphie and his dad both want practical gifts centered on heat management

Once you're a parent, people are considerably less interested in what you want for Christmas. Maybe that's because what you want as you get older is often less fun than the hottest new toy. In "A Christmas Story," the Old Man says he wants a new furnace for Christmas. Several times we see the Old Man head to the basement to fight their furnace with a string of expletives and the sound of clanging echoing through the house.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralph starts off by asking for his dream gift — a time machine to go back to the beginning of the year when he and his wife had agreed he could have a year to pursue his writing career full-time. Then he mentions the more realistic gift: He wants a new radiator for his car. We see Ralph's Plymouth's constant radiator issues (which he fixes with an egg and one time he just has to wait for it to cool down). So maybe Ralphie and his Old Man are more alike than they thought. They both have trouble with heat-regulating machines.

In God We Trust -- All Others Pay Cash

When Ralphie walks into Flick's pub, there's a sign behind the bar that says "In God We Trust — All Others Pay Cash." You might not even have noticed it, but there's a great amount of relevance there. This is more than just a clever turn of phrase perfect for a drinking establishment full of barflies. It's also where "A Christmas Story" came from.

Jean Shepherd was a noted writer and radio voice who most notably penned a series of stories inspired by his youth entitled, you guessed it, "In God We Trust — All Others Pay Cash." It's about an assignment to write about the small town where he came from (in the book, Shepherd is living in NYC, not Chicago). In the book, he starts off reciting all he hates about his hometown (which the children discuss at the beginning of "A Christmas Story Christmas"). Then he stops in the bar owned by his childhood friend Flick and begins reminiscing. The first story is about that one Christmas when all he wanted was a Red Ryder BB gun...

The attic of memories

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Ralphie returns to his childhood home for a Christmas unlike any other because it will be Ralphie's first Christmas without his Old Man. The home looks the same, sure, but it's in the attic where we find the real treasures.

Ralph goes up to the attic looking for the Christmas ornaments and as is often the case, the man is thrown back into his old childhood digging through his parents' "junk." He opens a box and finds the pink bunny costume that we had seen him receive in "A Christmas Story," a gift from Aunt Clara his mother found delightful and his father had said looked like a "deranged Easter Bunny."

He sees the lampshade, all that was left from his father's infamous leg lamp (which his mother "accidentally" breaks in "A Christmas Story"). He sees his great Red Ryder air gun. He sees the blue bowling ball his mom had gotten for the Old Man for Christmas — and then carelessly dropped onto his crotch. And then he gets infuriated when he finds a plastic Christmas tree his mother had bought. She explains his father had rejected it, of course, and in that spirit decides the first thing to do is to go get a Christmas tree. There is some irony in the fact that the Old Man had said he was thinking of maybe buying a plastic tree as a way to negotiate the Christmas tree salesman into throwing in a piece of rope and tying the tree onto the Old Man's Oldsmobile.

Same but different

As Mark Twain once said, "History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme." And "A Christmas Story Christmas" is full of rhyming. We see the same radio Ralphie used to listen to (how it survived 30 years...) but it's next to a TV. The hole in the fence now has a flapping door. Then there is the Bumpus family.

In "A Christmas Story" we only ever see the Bumpus hounds. They swarm the Old Man, and they irritate him to no end, though the coup de grace is when they eat his Christmas Turkey. The Bumpus family still has a ton of hounds who now swarm Ralphie. But for the first time, we see an actual Bumpus — Delbert.

Ironically, Delbert Bumpus ends up being the key to Julie getting her dad Ralphie the gift he wants, though his father (or the memories of his father) gives him the other gift he wants. His dad helps him become a published author. But Delbert Bumpus delivers a radiator.

One final rhyme is the fact that the two bullies are the sons of Scut Farkus (and Ralphie's children stand up to them as Ralphie did to their father). The twist: Scut is now a cop and ends up actually being somewhat of a saving grace for an adult Ralphie.

Higbees is also the same, but different

Hohman is a fictitious midwestern city, a mill town it would seem, set up to represent Anytown, USA. The central part of Hohman is of course the great department store downtown, Higbees. In "A Christmas Story" young Ralph describes reveling at the window and in "A Christmas Story Christmas," he's still just as impressed.

When they go in the elves have the same costume. The setup has a slide down from Santa, to the point that Ralph warns his children about getting a boot in the face as he had in "A Christmas Story." And Santa is a distraction for the kids while their parents shop. There's even a creepy kid in front of the children in line who blows up when it's finally his turn to talk to Santa.

There are differences, though. Mom and Grandma sit in the lounge drinking while Dad does all the shopping. Julie is a shrewd negotiator with Santa, unlike her father. And this time around, we get to see the mad dash of pre-internet gift shopping that today is relegated to Gen X and older nostalgia.

Ralphie shoots Julie's eye out (almost)

There are few more memorable lines from any Christmas movie ever than "You'll shoot your eye out" from "A Christmas Story." Ralphie's mom says it; his teacher says it; the Higbee's Santa says it to him. This simple but famous line was the top reason everybody gives for him not to get a BB gun. And sure enough, the first time he shoots the rifle a BB ricochets into his glasses. Since his glasses saved him, though, there are no eye injuries in his family. That is until he pegs his daughter.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," the scene that most cements Ralph's role as a good dad is not the gift-hunting or the desire to make them stronger or deliver the perfect Christmas. We see him launch into an unabashedly joyous snowball fight with his kids as his car cools down and we instantly realize how much he loves his family. All is going well until Ralph turns to launch a distant snowball at his son Mark and inadvertently hits his daughter Julie in the eye at point-blank range. She ends up with an eye patch. And Ralphie almost actually shoots somebody's eye out.

Flick's revenge

The inclusion of a grown Flick and Schwartz in "A Christmas Story Christmas" was a highlight for anybody who grew up with the movie and wondered whatever happened to their own childhood friends. Of course, in the original film, you'd maybe only know them as Ralphie's friend who stuck his tongue to a pole (Flick) and the one who triple-dog-dared him (Schwartz).

These days, Flick owns the bar where Schwartz is a barfly. One of the most memorable moments in the first movie is when Flick sticks his tongue to a pole and gets it stuck, eventually having to be unstuck by the fire department. You can't help but feel bad for Flick and so it's a wonderful moment to see him get his revenge in "A Christmas Story Christmas." In the new film, he triple dog dares Schwartz to hit a frozen slide and jump into a snowy field. Schwartz gets his comeuppance, and like all good friends, they follow it with some "all-is-forgiven" camaraderie.

Ralph's writing flow

It seems like an odd choice to have Ralphie grow up to be a writer (besides the fact that it was created by a writer). But in "A Christmas Story," he does have a scene of divine inspiration. While writing his essay on why he should get a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun, Ralphie describes the words just flowing out of him into what would no doubt be a magnificent treatise.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas" grownup Ralph goes to the attic, now having failed to get his book published, get the kids presents, or even in his eyes to have stepped into his Old Man's large shoes. He describes how the words flow through him as he writes about his old man for what was supposed to be his dad's eulogy. 

In "A Christmas Story," the essay doesn't get the grade or reaction he'd hoped. Yet, in "A Christmas Story Christmas," this flow of inspiration yields a story so captivating that it lands on the front page of the local paper and even syndication. 

Escape music and shots

Some of the most memorable "fancy" shots in "A Christmas Story" involve a riveting chase score and some sped-up shots and audio, especially while running from the bullies. While "A Christmas Story Christmas" has some special effects ranging from the aforementioned Rockwell montage to a boy who throws up at Santa's feet, the original "A Christmas Story" depended more on the actors and Jean Shepherd's narration to invoke emotion. Still few moments better show the feeling of a hurry than the moment when everything frantically speeds up.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," this effect isn't used to show them running from a bully. It's used to show how excited they are to see Flick's revenge. The bar clears out at record speed as everybody. No longer are they using speed to run from bullies but to run to drunken antics. I guess that's growing up.

Even more, Scut the bully evokes the song of the wolf from "Peter and the Wolf," both then and now. Symphonic themes always do a great job of really tying time together.

Dad saves Christmas in both

In "A Christmas Story," the only gift Ralphie truly wants is the one present nobody wants to give him. He even opens all his presents on Christmas day and while he's grateful, he admits he didn't get everything he wanted. Then the Old Man tells him to check the box behind the desk and there it is: Ralph's Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun. When Mother looks at him, the Old Man explains he had one himself when he was 8. Though the smile as Ralphie opens it says everything: The man lived for his kids' holiday happiness.

In "A Christmas Story Christmas," all of the presents get stolen from the broken trunk of Ralph's beater car. On Christmas Eve, Mother goes to the basement only to find that the Old Man had actually purchased all of the gifts the kids wanted and so they get the Christmas they wanted despite heading into Christmas Eve without many prospects for gift exchanging. Not only does Pops get all the gifts, but in writing about him Ralph finally gets his first published success. 

When Mark unwraps the sled he'd wanted and in ecstatic incredulousness asks how the Old Man knew it was what he wanted, Ralphie says, "He knows. He always knows." Which was the Old Man's answer when Ralphie told him Santa didn't ask whether he had been good or bad.

Kids still open presents the same

There is a time-honored tradition of children running through the meticulously-wrapped gifts they've received. The Parkers are no different. What is fun to see, though, is how similar Mark and Julie are to Ralph and Randy when they were kids. The chaos that is Christmas gift-opening was captured perfectly in "A Christmas Story," and the echoes in "A Christmas Story Christmas" hit just as hard.

It starts off controlled and respectful but then it quickly explodes into an all-out bacchanalia of ripping wrapping paper. Even more, in "A Christmas Story," Ralph and Randy both open socks at the same time. They look at their boring gifts, then disinterestedly throw the socks over their shoulders and get back into tearing. In "A Christmas Story Christmas," Mark and Julie get books (they look to be dime-store pulp novels) and throw those over their shoulders before getting back to work. Proving whether we're talking about the 1940s or the 1970s, one thing remains the same: Kids have no problem running through their gifts in search of the ones they actually like.

The Christmas tree in the dark scene returns

There's a lot to relate to in "A Christmas Story." But few parents can deny that possibly the best scene is when Mother and the Old Man get to sit in a chair together, in the dark, having successfully pulled off yet another Christmas, staring out the window, in peaceful triumph. "A Christmas Story Christmas" has its own version of the scene but it's a little different. The Old Man is gone. Or is he?

Yes, now instead of him and Mother basking in the glow of the tree after all the chaos of the holiday it's Mother and Ralphie, worried about the future and missing the Old Man. Yet the simple beauty of that scene is still there. Then the fuse blows, another of The Old Man's love-hates because it allowed him to show off his handiness despite it being a pain. And of course, just when Mother and Ralphie bring the Old Man up, the fuse blows. If anything, this scene, like so many others, shows that the traditions we honor and the memories we make with our families, especially around the holidays, continue on long after we pass on.

A Christmas Story

By bob clark, a christmas story themes, traditional christmas.

The overwhelming theme of the movie is the traditional Christmas celebration. It depicts Christmas as a time of both stress and joy for the average, middle-class, Midwestern American family in the 1940s: small riffs between mother and father, children's fantasies of certain gifts, a family trip to purchase and decorate a tree together, a visit to an angry mall Santa, and the chaotic but joyful Christmas morning spent opening presents (children) and drinking wine (the parents). While all viewers will likely relate to the film's portrayal of Christmas, viewers of a certain age might find particular details in the film most relatable, including the children listening to the radio, the father constantly fighting with the furnace, walking to school in the snow, and the soap punishment Ralphie receives for swearing in front of his parents.

The film draws a humorous contrast between Ralphie's parents, often portraying the mother as warm and patient and the father as distracted and intimidating. It also pokes fun at the film's setting – the 1940s – and the gender stereotypes that existed at the time. When the family sits down for dinner, for example, Ralphie's mother is just about to take a bite of food when Ralphie's father asks her to get up and get him seconds. The adult Ralphie remarks, "My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in 15 years," emphasizing the expectation that his mother was meant to serve the rest of the family before herself. This portrayal of gender roles is generally lighthearted rather than seriously critical, however. Indeed, the film allows Ralphie's mother to exact a type of "power" of her own when she secretly breaks the hideous leg lamp, another instance of the sexes battling within what would have been a typical 1940s marriage.

A Child's Perspective

Although the film is narrated by the adult Ralphie Parker , it is primarily presented from the perspective of a nine-year-old child, who is discovering the gap between what parents say and what parents do, learning to stand up to bullies, and experiencing the reality that is a disgruntled mall Santa. When Ralphie uses a swear word, he is harshly punished, but he learned the word from his father, who peppers his mutterings with curses as he fights with the family's unreliable furnace. Similarly, nearly every adult in the film tells Ralphie, "you'll shoot your eye out" when he requests the Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, emphasizing the difference between a child's perspective – having fun – and an adult's – danger and injury. The gap between a child's perspective and an adult's is one of the key themes in the film.

A Christmas Story follows what many would consider the average middle-class American household in the 1940s. Even the film's name suggests that this "story" is not necessarily a special one, but instead one to which many people will likely relate. One of the film's central themes, therefore, revolves around the family's economic status, especially with regard to the father (who, in the 1940s, would be considered the "provider" of the household). Throughout the film, Ralphie's father is preoccupied with getting rich fast; he does crossword puzzles daily for the chance to win money, and when he wins the infamous leg lamp from Western Union, he is convinced it is a high-class piece of decor. Through the character of Ralphie's father, the film showcases the common middle-class desire for wealth, flashy belongings, and ease of living.

Bildungsroman

The term "bildungsroman" typically refers to a coming-of-age novel, but it is just as operative in this film about a nine-year-old boy at Christmas time. When the film begins, Ralphie is very much a child with little control over his own life. His desire for the Red Ryder BB gun becomes a symbol of his desire to transition out of childhood and into adolescence, a transformation that starts to happen once he retaliates against the bullies at school. After that moment, both Ralphie's father and mother begin to see him in a different light, so much so that his father even buys him the Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas after all.

Part of the film's comedy stems from its reliance on exaggerated situations that border on the absurd. The disgruntled mall Santa, for example, sits atop a giant slide down which the mean elves send children after they sit on Santa's lap. In this scene, the film dramatizes Ralphie's perspective as a small child being dragged and pushed around by the intimidating adults, creating a humorous representation of the otherwise wholesome and popular Christmas activity. The film's absurdity helps frame typical Christmas traditions in a new light, subtly mocking them while reminding viewers of their own Christmas experiences as children and even as adults.

While the film follows Ralphie more closely than other characters, it is ultimately the story of a family celebrating the Christmas holiday. Over the course of the film, each member of the family becomes more complex, and viewers will likely sympathize with at least one character throughout. The final scene of the movie – in which Ralphie, his brother, his father, and his mother laugh uncontrollably at the Chinese restaurant – emphasizes the way that Christmas, with all of its stresses and surprises, ultimately does bring the family closer together. The adult Ralphie thinks fondly of that Christmas because of his Red Ryder BB gun, but he also suggests that that particular Christmas is significant because of the memories of his family that it left him with.

A Christmas Story Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Christmas Story is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How do Scrooge and his nephew differ in there opinions of Christmas

Scrooge and his nephew are character foils (opposites). Scrooge's nephew is happy and giving while Scrooge is miserable and miserly. Fred is happy, joyful, full of love and charity. He doesn't worry about money and has happily married the woman he...

Share your responses to Capote’s characters and to the ways they are treated by others.

In Capote's story, A Christmas Memory , friendship is an important theme, particularly, friendship between those who aren't accepted socially. Buddy and his friend are alienated by the other members of their family. Family members "have power over...

Who is the antagonist and the protagonist of The Christmas Story?

I'm sorry, we are unable to answer film based questions unless otherwise noted in the category. This is a short-answer "literature" forum.

Study Guide for A Christmas Story

A Christmas Story study guide contains a biography of Bob Clark, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Christmas Story
• A Christmas Story Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Wikipedia Entries for A Christmas Story

• Introduction
• Release and reception

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

What Sentencing Could Look Like if Trump Is Found Guilty

By Norman L. Eisen

Mr. Eisen is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

For all the attention to and debate over the unfolding trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, there has been surprisingly little of it paid to a key element: its possible outcome and, specifically, the prospect that a former and potentially future president could be sentenced to prison time.

The case — brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, against Mr. Trump — represents the first time in our nation’s history that a former president is a defendant in a criminal trial. As such, it has generated lots of debate about the case’s legal strength and integrity, as well as its potential impact on Mr. Trump’s efforts to win back the White House.

A review of thousands of cases in New York that charged the same felony suggests something striking: If Mr. Trump is found guilty, incarceration is an actual possibility. It’s not certain, of course, but it is plausible.

Jury selection has begun, and it’s not too soon to talk about what the possibility of a sentence, including a prison sentence, would look like for Mr. Trump, for the election and for the country — including what would happen if he is re-elected.

The case focuses on alleged interference in the 2016 election, which consisted of a hush-money payment Michael Cohen, the former president’s fixer at the time, made in 2016 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg is arguing that the cover-up cheated voters of the chance to fully assess Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

This may be the first criminal trial of a former president in American history, but if convicted, Mr. Trump’s fate is likely to be determined by the same core factors that guide the sentencing of every criminal defendant in New York State Court.

Comparable cases. The first factor is the base line against which judges measure all sentences: how other defendants have been treated for similar offenses. My research encompassed almost 10,000 cases of felony falsifying business records that have been prosecuted across the state of New York since 2015. Over a similar period, the Manhattan D.A. has charged over 400 of these cases . In roughly the first year of Mr. Bragg’s tenure, his team alone filed 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 people or companies.

Contrary to claims that there will be no sentence of incarceration for falsifying business records, when a felony conviction involves serious misconduct, defendants can be sentenced to some prison time. My analysis of the most recent data indicates that approximately one in 10 cases in which the most serious charge at arraignment is falsifying business records in the first degree and in which the court ultimately imposes a sentence, results in a term of imprisonment.

To be clear, these cases generally differ from Mr. Trump’s case in one important respect: They typically involve additional charges besides just falsifying records. That clearly complicates what we might expect if Mr. Trump is convicted.

Nevertheless, there are many previous cases involving falsifying business records along with other charges where the conduct was less serious than is alleged against Mr. Trump and prison time was imposed. For instance, Richard Luthmann was accused of attempting to deceive voters — in his case, impersonating New York political figures on social media in an attempt to influence campaigns. He pleaded guilty to three counts of falsifying business records in the first degree (as well as to other charges). He received a sentence of incarceration on the felony falsification counts (although the sentence was not solely attributable to the plea).

A defendant in another case was accused of stealing in excess of $50,000 from her employer and, like in this case, falsifying one or more invoices as part of the scheme. She was indicted on a single grand larceny charge and ultimately pleaded guilty to one felony count of business record falsification for a false invoice of just under $10,000. She received 364 days in prison.

To be sure, for a typical first-time offender charged only with run-of-the-mill business record falsification, a prison sentence would be unlikely. On the other hand, Mr. Trump is being prosecuted for 34 counts of conduct that might have changed the course of American history.

Seriousness of the crime. Mr. Bragg alleges that Mr. Trump concealed critical information from voters (paying hush money to suppress an extramarital relationship) that could have harmed his campaign, particularly if it came to light after the revelation of another scandal — the “Access Hollywood” tape . If proved, that could be seen not just as unfortunate personal judgment but also, as Justice Juan Merchan has described it, an attempt “to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

History and character. To date, Mr. Trump has been unrepentant about the events alleged in this case. There is every reason to believe that will not change even if he is convicted, and lack of remorse is a negative at sentencing. Justice Merchan’s evaluation of Mr. Trump’s history and character may also be informed by the other judgments against him, including Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling that Mr. Trump engaged in repeated and persistent business fraud, a jury finding that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll and a related defamation verdict by a second jury.

Justice Merchan may also weigh the fact that Mr. Trump has been repeatedly held in contempt , warned , fined and gagged by state and federal judges. That includes for statements he made that exposed witnesses, individuals in the judicial system and their families to danger. More recently, Mr. Trump made personal attacks on Justice Merchan’s daughter, resulting in an extension of the gag order in the case. He now stands accused of violating it again by commenting on witnesses.

What this all suggests is that a term of imprisonment for Mr. Trump, while far from certain for a former president, is not off the table. If he receives a sentence of incarceration, perhaps the likeliest term is six months, although he could face up to four years, particularly if Mr. Trump chooses to testify, as he said he intends to do , and the judge believes he lied on the stand . Probation is also available, as are more flexible approaches like a sentence of spending every weekend in jail for a year.

We will probably know what the judge will do within 30 to 60 days of the end of the trial, which could run into mid-June. If there is a conviction, that would mean a late summer or early fall sentencing.

Justice Merchan would have to wrestle in the middle of an election year with the potential impact of sentencing a former president and current candidate.

If Mr. Trump is sentenced to a period of incarceration, the reaction of the American public will probably be as polarized as our divided electorate itself. Yet as some polls suggest — with the caveat that we should always be cautious of polls early in the race posing hypothetical questions — many key swing state voters said they would not vote for a felon.

If Mr. Trump is convicted and then loses the presidential election, he will probably be granted bail, pending an appeal, which will take about a year. That means if any appeals are unsuccessful, he will most likely have to serve any sentence starting sometime next year. He will be sequestered with his Secret Service protection; if it is less than a year, probably in Rikers Island. His protective detail will probably be his main company, since Mr. Trump will surely be isolated from other inmates for his safety.

If Mr. Trump wins the presidential election, he can’t pardon himself because it is a state case. He will be likely to order the Justice Department to challenge his sentence, and department opinions have concluded that a sitting president could not be imprisoned, since that would prevent the president from fulfilling the constitutional duties of the office. The courts have never had to address the question, but they could well agree with the Justice Department.

So if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration, its ultimate significance is probably this: When the American people go to the polls in November, they will be voting on whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable for his original election interference.

What questions do you have about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial so far?

Please submit them below. Our trial experts will respond to a selection of readers in a future piece.

Norman L. Eisen investigated the 2016 voter deception allegations as counsel for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .