A Christmas Story: The "Casablanca" of Christmas?

“You’ll shoot your eye out!”

“Fuuuuudggge…”

“Frah-geee-lay.”

"I can't put my arms down!"

“Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

So many classic lines. So many iconic incidents! A Christmas Story, the brainchild of writer/humorist Jean Shepherd and director Bob Clark, follows 9-year-old “Ralphie” Parker during the weeks leading up to Christmas Day. Set in 1940, Ralphie desperately wants a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Rifle—a BB gun, essentially, but one that will fulfill his boyhood dreams of being a cowboy, an adventurer, or any such courageous hero. Unfortunately, everyone from Mom to his school teacher to even the demented mall Santa Claus are opposed to the idea, always reciting the same maddening line: You’ll shoot your eye out! You’ll shoot your eye out!

Within that overarching context comes a number of other, even quirkier sub-plots—Ralphie’s friend getting his tongue stuck to a flagpole, Ralphie tackling the school bully in a fit of rage, Ralphie’s mother “accidentally” destroying her husband’s scandalous lamp, Ralphie letting slip the “F” word before his incredulous father. Each of these scenes is a classic unto itself, filled with memorable moments and quotable lines that still resonate in the modern zeitgeist. Indeed, despite its distinctive period-piece sensibilities, A Christmas Story remains stubbornly and curiously timeless, transcending its old-tymey trappings to gain a kind of universal, even primal appeal and relatability. Somehow, this boy, this third-grader traversing a now-foreign, 1940s world…is still able to reach audiences of a 21st-century mentality. He remains relevant despite inhabiting what now seems an alien, almost inscrutable world.

A Christmas Story is really the Casablanca of Christmas films. Both are iconic, indelible, and endlessly quotable. But if only one of the two are destined to survive the further strains of time, Ralphie's is the best destined to survive. So long as there are boys and childhood dreams and the hopes of Christmas Morn, there will be A Christmas Story.

It’s more than a film, it’s a script written for every soul.

Merry Christmas!--D

Flick takes a lick...for disastrous results.

Ralphie's mother overindulges in keeping her youngest warm. He's as snug as a bug in a rug who's lost all mobility in his upper limbs.

Ralphie blurts the "F-word" to his astonished, scandalized father. Both reactions are priceless.

Casablanca is rife with classic lines, but even the famous "Here's looking at you, kid" scene struggles to match the power of Ralphie dropping the "F-bomb" before his bemused, cantankerous father.

That scandalous, outlandish, fantastic lamp...