Dead Tree Alert: Generation X-Mas

A Christmas Story also has the advantage of a less strictly interelated narrative format. In It's A Wonderful Life you need to be there from the beginning for the dystopia Bedford Falls to make sense, to understand why the solvency of the S&L is so important, to understand what it's all about.

A Christmas Story is more a series of scenes that play out very well as idependant little clips. Ralphie walking down the stairs in the bunny outfit. Ralpie seeing Santa. Ralphie watching the schoolyard dare. All good, but you don't need to watch any one to understand the other (and the desire for the Red Ryder BB gun is repeated so often it's pretty much omnipresent.)

So, A Christmas Story plays much better as a marathon since you can start at pretty much any point in the movie and leave to pick it up again as some ramdon point without any loss in linearity or critical content. It's A Wonderful Life, you really need to sit down and watch. Who has time for that anymore?

I don't think we can underestimate the effect of "It's A Wonderful Life" exclusively airing on NBC.

The film now airs once a year, and it's padded with so many lame NBC celebrity stories about watching the film that it now takes three hours to get through the thing.

The TBS presentation may have plenty of commercials, but they make an event. It airs for 24 hours straight, and receives plenty of promotion time before and after.

NBC typically buries "It's A Wonderful Life" on Saturdays and if there's any special promotion for it, I haven't noticed it.

I was introduced to NL's Christmas Vacation by my roommate, since I was raised by a a pair of PBS-watching opera-loving classical-music-listening parents who never educated me in the subtleties of National Lampoon. I took it home with me over Thanksgiving to show my folks what we'd been missing.

Surprisingly, it was my mild-mannered, highly-educated, and severely un-hip dad who loved it, and my hipper and Beatles-loving mom who had to leave halfway through due to a deep (and previously unsuspected) antipathy towards the comedic stylings of Chevy Chase.

It just goes to show, you never know.

I have never liked Its A Wonderful Life. I never liked it as a child, I still don't like it as an adult. I always thought of it as cheezy and melodramatic. I love Jimmy Stewart, I love old movies, but never got into this one. I can't remember anyone in my family ever actually watching it at Christmas.

A Christmas Story is an annual staple for my family, though. It never appealed to me as a child - I found its tone bizarrely patronizing, I didn't get most of the humor, and I didn't at all relate to its portrayal of a child's existence. So I never watched it, and always avoided the living room every year when my dad was watching it.

Then I got older, probably 17 or 18, maybe more like 20. And my dad convinced me to give it another try. And all of a sudden, everything clicked! It was one of the funniest, most charming movies I had ever seen. The charm of the movie is that evokes nostalia for childhood (which, watching as a child, I just didn't appreciate). As an adult LOOKING BACK on being a child, I totally got it. I totally appreciated how the movie captured the ways that little trials, hopes, tribulations, dreams, victories, and punishments of daily childhood life take on such an enormous scope with kids. And it also captured the sense of wonder that only a child can feel about Christmas. Now Christmas is a combination of a shopping hassle and some nice time off work, with food and family. When I was a kid, though, I LIVED for Christmas, and the whole season did have a magical feel to it, which this movie totally captures. It is our perfect family Christmas Movie. I am interested to re-watch it after I have kids, because then I will have a whole new perspective shift and might appreciate it even more!

The communitarian vs. individualistic shift you talk about is interesting, but I don't necessarily think it explains the changing popularity of the TV Christmas specials. I have very communitarian, anti-corporate values and still prefer A Christmas Story to It's A Wonderful Life. I want something hilarious that I can watch with my family, something that isn't going to get stale over the years – not just a moral lesson.

On a more philosophical note, I wrote a school paper years back addressing the differences between the social messages of Charles Dickens' Hard Times and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Both authors offer a critique of the alienating, exploitive effects of the industrial revolution on workers and owners, but each took a different approach to how to remedy the situation. Dickens (as also evidenced in his Christmas Carol, which is why I bring this up) approached the issue from an individual perspective - individuals had epiphanies that made them realize the error of their greedy, dehumanizing ways, and they became better people. Marx took a more systemic approach, identifying systemic sources of inequality and seeking to break them down (while bringing about forced re-education of the bourgeoisie as a class). The impetus to change was placed more on the exploited to rise up for themselves, rather than waiting on those in charge to decide to share their wealth/resources.

Sorry for the tangent, but the question of individual vs community responsibility does seem to be prevalent in Christmas stories, in various ways. As I understand it, the spirit of the Christmas season is supposed to move people past individual greed towards positive communitarian action, resulting in benefits to both the community and the individual do-gooder. Many classic Christmas tales have themes of reconciliation between the individual and the community, the difference seems to be whether we are dealing with a hero or an anti-hero as main character. Seems like the Christmas trend is for good people (underdogs) to be rewarded by having the community come together to pull them up when they're down, while bad people (greedy individualists) are moved to realize the errors of their ways and become a part of the community.

Main characters are ‘bad' guys who are isolated from the community by their own badness, who come to realize the error of their ways and are then welcomed into the fold:
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: A story of personal epiphany. The Grinch is a greedy miser who experiences an epiphany and becomes altruistic. He is then welcomed into the larger community.
A Christmas Carol: A story of personal epiphany: Scrooge is a greedy miser who experiences an epiphany and becomes altruistic through the supernatural intervention of ghosts. He is then welcomed into the larger community.

Main characters are good guys who have become discouraged, but they inspire the community to action that restores their own faith:
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Deals with the mutual responsibility of the individual to the community and the community to the individual. Charlie Brown tries to steer the group towards something meaningful (overcoming corporate greed), but becomes discouraged by obstacles. The community (other kids) then has an epiphany, steps up, having realized the value of what he had tried to do, takes corrective action, and they are all joyously reunited.
It's A Wonderful Life: Deals with the mutual responsibility of the individual to the community and the community to the individual. George Bailey tries to accomplish meaningful goals (overcoming corporate greed), but becomes discouraged by obstacles. The community then steps up, having been inspired by his altruism, takes corrective action, and they are joyously reunited.
Miracle on 34th Street: Deals with the mutual responsibility of the individual to the community and the community to the individual. Altruistic Santa figure works to accomplish meaningful goals (overcoming corporate greed), he becomes discouraged by obstacles. The community (those inspired by him) step in, take corrective action, and they are joyously reunited.

I don't know where A Christmas Story fits into this debate, but it is still my favorite.

@shara says: Great response. I would say that I don't think that "communitarian" automatically equals "anti-corporate" nor that "Individualist" automatically equals "pro-corporate." I think that's a popular shorthand in our political discourse but a false one.

A Christmas Story, for instance, is a very individualist story vs. the communitarian It's a Wonderful Life--in that in Christmas Story, the Christmas observed by the larger community is satirized. (Affectionately, but still.) BUT, the larger community Christmas that's satirized is a very commercial one. I'm not saying that Christmas Story is a lefty tract by any means, but the "community" that's being spoofed is in part the community of the department store Santa, Little Orphan Annie and so on.

I may be in the minority in this opinion--I'm also always having arguments with people that libertarianism does not automatically = conservatism. I think you can have South Park Liberals as easily as you can South Park Conservatives.

One more thing that I also had to cut for space from my column is that I think A Charlie Brown Christmas (which I prefer to either movie despite my being entirely non-religious) is sort of a transition story between the two. It ends with Charlie Brown and his friends around the little rejected tree, forming a little community in opposition to the big, commercialized one of aluminum trees, etc.

I'd better stop before I start writing a doctoral dissertation here.

Oh, one more thing. I certainly don't think the whole individualist thing is THE reason A Christmas Story is a popular movie among 40-and-unders. It's also funny, it's attitude is different, and the sort of anthology, You-Tube-ish aspect SpotWeld points out also helps.

I mean, nobody who watches and likes A Christmas Story does so because they give a crap what "message" it has -- I certainly don't. But people do like the things they like in part because they resonate with their tastes or their worldview, and this is one of the ways this movie does.

By the way, if you like "Christmas Story," you should all become acquainted with the work of Jean Shepherd, who wrote and narrated it (and has a brief cameo on the Santa line.) I used to listen to him as a child (I'm a gen-X-er too) on the radio on WOR here in New York. Truly a brilliant, spell-binding storyteller, with a very cynical, anti-authority, yet at the same time quite American outlook. I think this pervades the film and it's one of the reason it's a big hit with the post-Woodstock generation.

James, I have to say, I'm slightly disappointed you didn't mention Shep in your piece, but let me just put a little plug in for the best Shep web site, http://www.flicklives.com.

@noho1: yes, one of the many parts I cut for space (where I was talking about the irony of post-Boomers identifying with a 1940s memoir) was a mention of Jean Shepherd. I'll restore it in the director's cut for the DVD. jp

My Mom wouldn't let me see A Christmas Story when it originally came out at the theaters. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. It was a movie she had decided (without seeing) was crass and stupid. I first saw A Christmas Story on cable about ten years ago and couldn't wait to get my Mom to watch on VHS. She and my stepfather almost fell off their chairs in laughter. The movie appeals to them due to the time period and appeals to all of us as a sentimental memory of childhood. I can't analyze it any more in depth than that. It's fun. But then I'm a fan of The Year Without A Santa Claus too....