Phoebe Kate

Some people start feeling Christmas-y right after Thanksgiving (a few even before that, but I don’t hang around them.  Too scary.)   Others when they buy presents and wrap them.  Some when they get their tree or start baking those ubiquitous fruitcakes (which will continue to be gifted and re-gifted long after the bakers have gone on to their eternal reward) or decorating the house or festooning every viable object in their yard (including the dog) with ornaments and lights. 

Me, I don’t feel an inkling of the traditional seasonal spirit until “A Christmas Story” begins its traditional 24-hour TV marathon on one or another TV station. 

You all know it and watch it, don’t you?  (Shame on you if you don’t.)  What’s the Yuletide without Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB gun and grand fantasies?  And his weird little brother Randy who refuses to eat and hides under the kitchen sink?  And his emotive and volatile father who wars against the infernal furnace and Bumpus’s hounds from hell? 

If you love the movie, you need to read books from which it was derived, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories by raconteur and radio/TV personality Jean Shepherd (1921-1999.)  Though his memoirs about his dysfunctional  Midwestern family in the 1930s are considerably darker (although no less humorous), the flick retains enough of Shepherd’s ironic detachment and satiric wit to rise above the usual treacly holiday fare of entertainment.  And if you look really closely, you’ll see flashes of the real Shepherd family – alcohol abuse, denial, anger, paranoia, alienation and a whole psychology textbook of other symptoms.

The way I look at it, the movie is like a homemade sugar cookie.  Sure, it’s sweet and tasty, but then there’s those burnt edges and underside.  And that’s the way it is with family, and holidays, and most everything else in life, as far as I can tell.

–phoebe kate