A Christmas Story

This is another one that I have to watch every year. You know how I said that if Christmas comes and goes, and I haven't seen Christmas Vacation at least once, then the whole season feels wasted and empty? Same goes for this one, only probably more so. The whole movie is about nostalgia. The narrator is telling us what is going on, but it's not like he is reading it off of a paper, he's saying it more as if he was sitting and talking to somebody about it, remembering the good old days when we still had that child-like innocence. The whole movie is relatable to everybody because we can all think of those special Christmas memories. The kind that are always fun to tell our friends about even years after they happened. Here, we have a guy relating a tale to us when he was a kid and he sounds like a middle-aged man. And he is talking about it like it happened only a month ago. That's another reason why Christmas is the best time of the year. The memories that we create at Christmas time stick with us more than the ones that we create at any other time of the year. And since Christmas also happens to be at the end of the year, we are also tempted to look back at the previous year, see who we were then, compare it to who we are now and hope to be the next time Christmas rolls around.

And on top of being very touching and relatable, I also think this is the funniest of the Christmas movies. I may love Christmas Vacation, but this is the one that makes me howl with laughter every time I see it. Whether it's the feud over the lamp, the demonic mall Santas or the first time a kid uses a curse word in front of their parents (we all remember that moment in our lives, especially if you grew up in a Protestant household), every scene is just as funny as the last time I watched it. I don't even need to mention the tongue on pole scene because we all know it so well. Touching, enjoyable and just so damn funny, A Christmas Story is by far my favorite Christmas movie.

Final Grade: A+++
Yours truly,
MP