One of the appeals of the the film
A Christmas Story is that it touches upon a universal Christmas memory – the perfect gift. Whether we got that gift or not, we all had some treasure we hoped to find under the tree on Christmas morning. Couple that memory with a healthy dose of holiday lunacy set in 1940, it can’t help but be an entertaining piece of nostalgia.
But few of us these grew up in the 1940s. Many of us are children of the 1970s and ‘80s, and have our own holiday holy grails – GI Joe with the kung fu grip, Atari game systems and Cabbage Patch dolls. Nevertheless, as I sit here by my window, the sun shining brightly reminds me of years ago, when I lived in a more wintery climate. Fresh fallen snow reflected sunlight everywhere, brighter than usual, bringing with it the promise of Christmas treasures and a happier New Year.
What does
A Christmas Story have to do with comics, you ask? Well, for one, it's star, Peter Billingsley, produced the
Iron Man movie. And Zack Ward, who played bully Scut Farkus, is a big comics fan himself.
Each year I usually found comics in my stocking, sometimes a Mego super-hero. But being largely a DC Comics fan, that kind of fell by the wayside when Mego began to focus on the Marvel Comics characters. I don’t know if that decision had anything to do with Mego’s eventual demise, but I sometimes wonder, given that sales peaked about the time the last DC Comics character, Green Arrow, came out.
As I left more childish pursuits behind – only to pick them up again some 30 years later – my Christmas focus was on books: Doc Savage, Star Trek, Conan and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And that’s okay, because in northern Indiana, when the snow piles high and you’re mostly stuck indoors, there’s little to do. It was the 1970s, and television had little to offer. I developed an interest in OTR (old time radio) programs, listening to
The Shadow and
Sherlock Holmes.
Growing up is a tricky thing, and the oddest things will stick in your memory. I remember in Janaury of 1983, looking out the windows of my senior English class as Greg Wallen railed in frustration that there had yet to be any significant snowfall. I’d best get used to it, I thought, knowing I would be moving to Georgia after graduation.
Six years later, having gone through college and entering the workforce, I found myself denied any kind of Christmas holiday. I’d known it was coming for some months, and I knew I had two choices: gripe and moan or make the best of it. I chose the latter. But like any child, I still had my dreams of what I wanted most for Christmas: a white Christmas. In coastal Georgia, nothing could be more unlikely.
Note that I said unlikely, not impossible. Because that year it actually snowed, beginning the night of the 23rd, through Christmas Eve and ending Christmas night. By the morning of the 26th it was gone. But it was enough.
That Christmas I went into work at 1:00 p.m., got off work about 8 and went home to watch
It’s a Wonderful Life. Afterward I walked over the cathedral to attend midnight mass. Later, back in my tiny one-room apartment, I opened my one gift sent to me by an old friend. It was a Tazmanian Devil t-shirt. I opened a bottle of wine given me by a co-worker and listened to an old-time radio show of
A Christmas Carol starring Lionel Barrymore and Orson Welles.
I spent Christmas utterly alone, other than those other co-workers who shared my same schedule. Some might suggest it was a pathetic way to celebrate the holidays, but for me it was an incredibly memorable, in the most positive way. I was poor as a church mouse, but the magic of Christmas was present that year, most likely never to be seen again. That year I got my equivalent of the Red Ryder BB gun.
As comic book fans we thrill to tales of the impossible, deeds of supremely powerful beings and the triumph of good over evil. Sometimes we are blessed with seeing the impossible in action, if only we know where to look for it.
The new year is bound to be happier, though perhaps not for all of us. Good will come with bad, and all we need to do is focus on the best and make the most of it.
Look - the sun is shining.
Merry Christmas.
Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? E-mail me at philip@comicbookbin.com
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