A Christmas eyepatch and an attic full of Easter eggs. Come unwrap these
hidden details in A Christmas Story Christmas. We triple dog dare you.
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. As was the case back then, the bribe doesn't work,
and the bribe just goes in a drawer.
In A Christmas Story, Ralphie has a lot of dreams about the future. In one of his dreams,
his paper is such a success that his teacher raves about it and his classmates loft him
on their shoulders as a great hero. In another fantasy, 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. He also 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. This time around, however, Ralph can't save his family,
and ultimately falls in battle. As an optimistic child, he's a hero;
as a struggling grown-up, he fails.
In A Christmas Story, Ralphie describes his father as so:
"Some men are Baptists, others are Catholics, my father was an Oldsmobile man."
In A Christmas Story Christmas, Ralph drives an old Plymouth. Even more, his car is pretty
beat-up while his dad 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
Ralph goes to buy a tree, attempting to emulate his dad'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, Ralph is a struggling
writer whose wife is supporting the family – though that's actually a sign of progress from the
world of housewives and working men the original movie inhabits. One thing stays the same, though:
Ralph is as devoted to his kids as his dad was.
In A Christmas Story Christmas, Ralph has a daydream remembering all the perfect Christmases
his dad 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.
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 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.
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, Ralphie's dad says he wants a new furnace for Christmas. Several
times we see his dad head to the basement to fight their furnace with a string of expletives and the
sound of clanging echoing throughout 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: A new radiator for his car. We see his car's constant radiator issues,
which he fixes with an egg. So maybe Ralph and his dad are more alike than they thought, seeing
as they both come to understand that the practical things in life sometimes take precedence to less
grounded hopes and dreams. Uh, Merry Christmas?
In A Christmas Story Christmas, Ralph returns to his childhood home for a Christmas unlike any
other, seeing as it will be his first Christmas without his dad. 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 but is thrown back into his old childhood while
digging through his parents' junk. There are tons of nods to the first movie up
there. He opens one box and finds the pink bunny costume, a gift from his Aunt Clara.
"He looks like a deranged Easter bunny."
And he casually tosses aside the shade to his father's bizarre leg
lamp - as a strain of sultry lounge music plays for a brief second.
He also gets infuriated when he finds a plastic Christmas tree his mother had bought,
and decides the first thing to do is to go get a real Christmas tree. There is some irony in the
fact that his father had said he was thinking of maybe buying a plastic tree. Of course,
his dad only said this as a negotiating tactic to get the Christmas tree salesman
to throw in a piece of rope and tie the tree onto the family's Oldsmobile.
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 known as Higbees. In A Christmas Story
Ralphie describes reveling at the Higbees window ,and in A Christmas Story Christmas, he's still
just as impressed. When they go into Higbees, 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.
"Ho. Ho. Ho." "Nooooo."
And Santa is still a distraction for the kids while their parents shop. There's even a creepy
kid in front of the children in line who pukes 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.
There are few more memorable lines from any Christmas movie than:
"You'll shoot your eye out. You’ll shoot your eye out. AH HA HA!"
In A Christmas Story, Ralphie's mom says it; his teacher says it; even Santa says it to him.
This simple but famous line was what everyone told him about why he shouldn't 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 with a snowball in A Christmas Story Christmas.
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. As a result, Julie ends up with an eye patch.
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. You can't help but feel bad for Flick for the tongue thing, 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 jump into a snowy field by going down a frozen slide. Schwartz gets his comeuppance,
and like all good friends, they follow it with some "all-is-forgiven" camaraderie.
It seems like an odd choice
to have Ralphie grow up to be 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 no doubt would be a magnificent story.
In A Christmas Story Christmas grownup Ralph goes to the attic, now having failed to get both his
book published and his kids Christmas presents. He describes how the words pour out of him as he
writes about his father 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.
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 a chaotic scene of tearing apart wrapping paper. Even more,
in A Christmas Story, Ralphie 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 apart
wrapping paper. In A Christmas Story Christmas, Mark and Julie get books 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.
There's a lot to relate to in A Christmas Story. But few parents can deny that possibly the best
scene is when Ralphie's mom and dad get to sit in a chair together, in the dark, having
successfully pulled off yet another Christmas. A Christmas Story Christmas has its own version
of the scene but it's a little different. After all, Ralph's dad is gone. Or is he?
Instead of Ralph's mom and dad basking in the glow of the tree after all the chaos of the holiday,
it's now Ralph and his mom. Although this time, Ralph and his mom are worried about
the future and missing Ralph's father. Then the fuse blows. And of course,
it happens right when Ralph and his mom bring up Ralph's dad. Because if anything indicates that
Old Man Parker's spirit is still with them, it's a fuse blowing under a Christmas tree.
"And just when it seemed like the only thing missing was the old man,
he was here, just like always."