Five Life Lessons Learned From A Christmas Story

For whatever reason, the 1980s didn't produce many straightforward Christmas classics that endure today. That decade did produced a few nontraditional holiday classics: both Die Hard and Gremlins attained eventual Christmas Movie status. There's also Scrooged, of course, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, each of them starring Saturday Night Live alumni and, not coincidentally, delivering holiday sentiment with plenty of satiric edge. And then there's A Christmas Story, the 1983 movie based on the writings of Jean Shepherd, which bottles Baby Boomer nostalgia as effectively as any film ever made. The film wasn't a hit right off the bat, but it slowly and steadily acquired loyalists, usually among audiences who saw their own childhoods somewhere in the adventures of Ralphie Parker and his family. Today it holds a place in the inner circle of Christmas movie, perhaps best exemplified by its now traditional round-the-clock Christmas airings on TBS and TNT.

A Christmas Story being a sort of coming-of-age tale for a young boy in middle America, it comes packed with plenty of actual life lessons: don't stick your tongue on a pole in freezing weather; don't leave the back door open with the Christmas turkey sitting defenseless on the kitchen table; beware the white-hot rage of the bullied pre-teen. But we've assembled what I think are the five wisest and most applicable lessons that a lifetime of watching A Christmas Story has taught. These apply to not only the Christmas season or the 1960s, when the film is set, but beyond and through time.

1) Persistence Pays Off

If any movie knows the value of persistence, it's A Christmas Story, which hung around in the far corners of cable TV, eventually snowballing into a cult classic, and then a holiday tradition in and of itself. The same lesson is taught bythe film itself, in its most memorable element. From minute one, Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) only wants one thing for Christmas: a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. He begs his parents, he pleads his case to his teacher, he overcomes a bout of stage fright in order to get his request in to Santa — and they all come back with the same answer: "You'll shoot your eye out." It's hard not to side with Mrs. Parker (Melinda Dillon) on this one, as we side with all parents who choose not to pass gun culture down to their children. Of course Mrs. Parker's nerve doesn't last forever, because (spoiler alert) there it is under the tree on Christmas morning: Ralphie's brand new air rifle. It would have been a dark vindication if Ralphie actually had shot his eye out while playing with his gun in the backyard, but this isn't that kind of movie. Instead, the lesson is that if you badger your parents for long enough, the ultimate path of least resistance for them is to just give you what you want.

2) Everything Is Marketing

Perhaps the most enduring and universally applicable lesson in A Christmas Story comes when Ralphie listens to his favorite radio serial, Little Orphan Annie, and sends out for a mail-order decoder pin so he can play along with the show's listener-participation gambit. But when Ralphie finally sets down to decode the show's secret message, he reveals the phrase to be "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine." The lesson is a valuable one: they're always trying to sell you something. Everything is a marketing ploy. One imagines if Ralphie were an older and wiser adult today he'd look at something like that mysterious monolith that keeps popping up in different places and realize it's all going to end up being viral marketing for something or other (because it is!).

3) Sh*t Rolls Downhill

In one of the film's most memorable moments, Ralphie gets his mouth washed out with soap after his mom hears that he said the "f" word. Of course, Ralphie only said the "f" word after a lifetime's worth of hearing his dad curse a blue streak at every sign of something going wrong. But when Mrs. Parker demands that Ralphie tell her where he heard that vile words, Ralphie knows the score: he can't rat out his old man. That's not the way this works. Dad gets to swear, Ralphie gets punished for repeating it, and who does he finger for the crime of teaching him swear words? His friend Schwartz, who ends up catching holy hell for it at home.

4) Mall Santas Are Scary as Heck

Setting aside the concept of Santa as a whole — we are not in the business of disillusioning anyone this Christmas season — let's just focus on the mall Santas, who set up camp in the middle of malls or department stores and gather child after child to their knee and ask them what they want for Christmas. These are small children! Strangers are frightening! And if you think a small child can't sniff out a ruse when it's wearing a big fake beard six inches from their faces, you're wrong. The mall Santa in A Christmas Story knows this, and so A Christmas Story presents him as the crankiest and least jolly Santa in history, film him with a bunch of warped fish-eye lenses to make him seem even more imposing, and then have him frighten multiple children into screaming and crying. That's the mall Santa experience.

5) So Many Movies Would Be Better If They Ended 5 Minutes Sooner

Regrettably, even a movie as likeable and charming as A Christmas Story ends on an ugly note, as the family must abandon their ruined turkey dinner and head out for Chinese food on Christmas Day. That's not the ugly part, of course. The ugly part is the jokes made at the expense of the Asian characters, who stereotypically invert their "r"s and "l"s as they sing "Deck the Halls" for the Parker family. It's the kind of racist joke that pops up in a lot of old movies, when the cultural sense of humor was thoroughly unconcerned with audiences who weren't middle class white people. Sadly, it's among many movies that don't end soon enough (oh A Mighty Wind, you're so perfect right up until that transphobic kicker at the end). Pro tip: call it a day just after the dogs ravage the turkey and you'll have a merry and unbothered Christmas.

TBS and TNT are set to air their traditional 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story beginning December 24th at 8:00 PM ET and 9:00 PM ET respectively

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Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.