Every Christmas morning, after tearing off the wrapping paper from our new toys and pulling oranges out of stockings, my family plays a selection of Christmas movies. These films play out over the course of the day, while we bake cookies, hang out with cousins, and eat Chinese takeout for dinner. There is one movie, however, that has stuck with me since my childhood, and not in a feel-good way like Buddy the Elf attempting to hug a wild raccoon in the movie Elf. No, this movie cut much deeper, leaving me with a sense of dread after every watch. I am of course talking about A Christmas Story.
A Christmas Story is about a little boy named Ralphie who wishes for a BB gun for Christmas. His parents, teacher, and even “Santa” all warn him that “you’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” Ignoring all of these warnings, he still longs for the gun, and eventually receives it under the tree on Christmas morning. After going in the backyard to shoot, he ends up hitting an icicle, and the bullet ricochets back, hitting him in the eye and proving all of the adults right.
Now, this movie was traumatizing to my sisters and I in our childhoods, and even now in many ways. The first comes at the very beginning of the film, when one of Ralphie’s friends, Flick, licks a frozen pole on a dare. The other schoolboys gather around him and jeer as he struggles to separate his tongue from the frozen metal, skin stuck to the surface. The firemen are called when Flick can’t get off the pole, and he returns to class with a bandaged tongue. Watching this with my sisters, I could almost feel the frozen metal on my tongue, and you’d best believe I didn’t go near a pole for at least a month after my first watch.
In addition, a moment in the movie illustrates Ralphie’s family’s car getting a flat tire, and he and his dad go out onto the side of the road to fix it. Ralphie holds the tray of bolts, but slips on the ice and they all go flying, causing Ralphie to curse. Because of his less than ideal word choice, his mother makes him chew a bar of soap as a punishment. As a five year old watching this movie, this scene always made me uncomfortable. The whines Ralphie gave to his mom, begging to take the bar of soap out of his mouth, hurt me to watch, and I always “used the bathroom” during those few minutes.
One of the absolute worst aspects of A Christmas Story is the plot itself. To my sisters and I, the fact that this little boy shoots his eye out with a BB gun after multiple adults repeatedly warn him of the consequences sent shivers down my six year old self. The Santa’s Workshop scene was particularly terrifying to my sisters and I. Ralphie and his family went to see a mall Santa, who sits at the top of a staircase and asks little kids what they want for Christmas. Santa sits kids on his lap, then throws them down a slide with the help of his elves, who look like they would rather be literally anywhere else. When it gets to Ralphie’s turn, his mind goes blank and he doesn’t say anything. The elves put him on the slide, but Ralphie hangs on, remembering his wish. He shouts out his wish for a BB gun, and the Santa then literally kicks him down the slide with his boot. The entire scene, with the creepy Santa, mean elves, and chaotic camera work, creates an absolutely traumatizing scene for my sisters and I in our childhoods.
A Christmas Story is a uniquely iconic movie with tons of stand-out moments and iconic scenes, such as the leg lamp and Chinese takeout Christmas dinner. After my mother turns it on for our yearly batch of trauma, all my sisters and I can do is look at each other and sigh, defeatedly turning back to our cookie decorating.