A Christmas Story Is a Bad Christmas Movie

While there are a lot of Christmas movies out there, for some people there are a few that are considered required viewing. As soon as Thanksgiving is in the books each year, various television networks and streaming services start playing these iconic films for fans to gather around the device of their choosing and settle in for some holiday cheer. One of these films is A Christmas Story and while the film is a holiday staple for many, many people, I am not one of them. In fact, I’m here to take the opposite stance: A Christmas Story a bad movie and doesn’t deserve to be a holiday classic.

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If for some reason you have managed to get through a holiday season unscathed by this movie, here’s what you need to know. A Christmas Story is a 1983 comedy (I use that term loosely) directed by Bob Clark. It’s actually based largely on a 1966 book of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd. The film follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker and his family with their series of misadventures during Christmas 1939 and largely focuses on Ralphie’s desire to receive a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle — something he’s repeatedly told “you’ll shoot your eye out” in response to. The film was moderately successful at the box office, but later became an iconic holiday film, with TNT and TBS doing a full-on 24-hour marathon of the film each year. There were also three sequels, 1994’s My Summer Story, 2012’s A Christmas Story 2, and 2022’s A Christmas Story Christmas, though none of those films have matched the original’s popularity.

So, A Christmas Story is a nostalgia movie about a kid who just wants something specific for Christmas. Kids have Christmas wish lists all the time, what’s so bad about this? Well, for starters even in movies where gifts and Santa and all of that tend to be a focus, there is at least some Christmas spirit. A Christmas Story has none. Seriously. There isn’t any warm family togetherness or cheer. It’s just a movie about consumerism and guns, or more specifically one kid’s overwhelming desire to get one as a gift and ultimately prove that he’s not responsible enough for one — and then cover up that he very nearly did shoot his eye out by lying about it. In the movie, that Red Ryder gun is the most important thing in the world and that’s kind of not so Christmassy message.

But let’s say we give the movie a pass for being all about the want of a gun. Fine. That still doesn’t redeem the movie because all of the characters in A Christmas Story (other than Ralphie, he’s just a kid) are miserable people. Literally, no one in this movie is happy. Ralphie’s dad is angry all the time and pretty selfish as well — he consistently ignores the feelings and needs of his family, which is evident in his own obsession with the leg lamp. Ralphie’s mother is a more sympathetic figure, but she’s also just generally miserable with her needs ignored. The poor woman never gets anything for herself, including respect. And if we’re being honest, Ralphie is something of a miserable character if only because people treat him pretty badly throughout the film — the film even depicts what we would consider to be child abuse and neglect, particularly the scene where Ralphie is made to suck on soap for using foul language and it’s played for humor.

A Christmas Story is more than just gun-fixated consumerism and miserable characters, though. It’s also peddling fake nostalgia to the point it feels like an outright fraud. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of people who simply don’t believe me when I tell them the movie was released in 1983. Most people think it was made closer to the time it is set in because aesthetically, that’s what it looks like. The film has a very vintage visual quality that goes a bit beyond what one might expect for a period piece and it relies on that vibe — and a suggested nostalgia for the “good old days” of the late 1930s which, spoiler alert, weren’t exactly good for a lot of folks — to endear audiences. It also relies on that old timey vibe to peddle its “humor” with things like the “funny” moment of Ralphie being made to suck on soap. No, thank you.

Miserable characters, fake nostalgia, and a pretty flimsy consumerism story passed off as charming all come together to make A Christmas Story a pretty bad movie. And yet, somehow, this bad movie has become a major part of the American holiday tradition. Something about this movie continues to appeal to viewers year after year after year and while I will probably die on the hill of this movie just sucking, I can acknowledge that people like what they like and some traditions just stick. Even I end up watching A Christmas Story at least once a season because it was my mom’s favorite and now it’s something we watch in her memory (albeit I do it begrudgingly). But even with it being tradition, it’s time we stop acting like it’s a good movie. It’s not. And I guess that’s okay. Merry Christmas… and try not to shoot your eye out, okay?