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New Year’s resolutions are always challenging for me. It’s so easy to be too ambitious and set your goals too high, which invariably leads to disappointment. I’m sure everyone knows someone who has given up on their resolutions before the end of January. However, being ambitious can drive us to become better people and to excel, so maybe it’s good to set lofty goals?

In my past life in the corporate world, we taught our employees to set SMART goals for themselves. Who doesn’t love an acronym, right? SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. This system works well in business, as it can teach people to divide challenges in smaller chunks, improve their performance, and measure their progress… but it’s not a very pleasant experience to try and run your life like you’d run a department!

I’ve always taken nearly the opposite track when I set my yearly resolutions, or rather renew my resolutions, because they have been the same for years: I’m purposely vague. Every day I strive to do at least one thing in three categories: something that focuses on knowledge or brain power, something that focuses on health or body power, and something that focuses on family and friends.

Photograph by Sally Mahoney. Some rights reserved.

This is obviously very vague, but it’s that vagueness that allows me to stick with it. For the first category, I can read an article, story, textbook – anything from which I can learn. Or maybe I can play a game of chess or have a debate with someone. Anything that grows my mind works – even researching and writing an article! For the second category I can obviously work out, but as much as I’d like to, I don’t have the time for a full work-out every day. However, a long walk with the baby counts too, or maybe eating a healthy salad for lunch. And the last category is always the most fun: get in touch with a friend or relative, play with the baby, do something nice for someone.

Those resolutions may seem very vague to people who set specific goals like losing a certain amount of weight or saving a specific amount of money, but ultimately they help me attain what’s always been my main goal: to be a better person when I go to sleep than I was when I woke up.

Submitted by Stefan Raets. Stefan is a refugee from the corporate world. When he isn’t reading or writing, he’s probably feeding or diapering his newborn son.

Along with my resolution to stay upbeat and optimistic no matter what, this year I’m going green. I’m going to achieve my writing goals (and along with them, my financial ones) and I’m going to be environmentally responsible while doing so by reusing and recycling whenever possible.

Most resolutions fail because they’re spur of the moment ideas born solely out of optimism, with little planning behind them. But I’ve done the groundwork and mapped out some practical applications of my resolutions to keep me on track all year. Here’s my plan for 2008, step by step:

1. Finish editing the novel and start submitting it. I can’t get famous by keeping it in a drawer, can I?

2. Recycle all my old bank statements and tax returns from the last 15 years. I’m going to need that filing cabinet space to store royalty statements and big thick tax returns once I get a cushy contract with a major publishing house.

3. Recycle unsent letters. There’s an exercise encouraged in marriage counseling where one writes a letter to her uncooperative spouse and says everything she wants to say, however she wants to say it. The spouse doesn’t get to the see the letter, it’s just to vent. I have an entire boot box full of them, all beginning with phrases such as ‘Dear !#%&@’ and ‘Dear Mr. Sensitivity’, that I reread occasionally after I’ve had a few glasses of wine. I could mail them now, and perhaps he’d even laugh. But imagine the postage fees! No point going into debt right at the beginning of the year. Besides, I need the postage to keep mailing out my manuscript–because, mysteriously, it keeps coming back. The publishers I’ve sent it to thus far must have a full list for quite a while.

4. Go on a diet and get some exercise. I want to get in better shape before I start lunching with the other literary greats. I’d like to lose at least 20 more pounds than necessary so I can fully indulge in New York cuisine once I’m flown out to negotiate a contract. But I doubt there’ll be time. Oh, and the talk shows! The camera adds at least 10 pounds; I don’t want to look too fat on Letterman.

5. Recycle the small pile of rejection slips. They all say almost the same thing, word for word, just on different letterhead. Not worth the space to keep them.

6. Dig out the few most entertaining unsent spouse letters for safekeeping. I kept meaning to take that box to the recycling center, but luckily I put it off. Those witty gems might be worth something someday when I’m a famous novelist. Maybe I’ll even send one to the ex after I’m a household name, just as a sign of goodwill. He could sell it on eBay.

7. Recycle more rejection slips, except the one with a handwritten note that I can’t read because it’s blurred by a coffee stain. It looks like ‘monklurp fxp tipto n’ when I squint. But it’s still special: an editor actually took the time to scribble something illegible on the rejection slip! That means I’m getting warmer…

8. Instead of wasting yet more paper, start calling publishing houses to see if they’re even looking at manuscripts, or if their lines are full for a while. There’s no point in wasting time sending my book to places that don’t currently need new books! If they’re accepting manuscripts, I will then explain that they must have mistakenly put mine back in the envelope without reading it.

Photograph © (c) Inkswamp. Some rights reserved.

9. Write some letters to publishing houses. Letters I would never, ever send unless I planned a major shift in career path. Letters questioning the sanity and good taste of several key people. Write my first ever letter using only expletives and exclamation points.

10. Recycle those letters. Responsible, see?

11. Recycle more rejection slips. What is wrong with these people, don’t they know they’re wasting precious natural resources? I printed that manuscript to be read and appreciated, not just shuffled from envelope to envelope!

12. Drunk dial Simon & Schuster. Explain to the woman on the phone that in the spirit of recycling, they didn’t need to send my manuscript back to me. She could have kept it and put it somewhere else instead.

13. Send letter of apology to receptionist at Simon & Schuster. Include a note asking her to recycle it when she’s finished.

14. Send my novel to all my friends electronically and on CD-ROM, since clearly no publisher wants to take a chance on something so original. Yes, of course I’m happy about it; it all worked out just as I had planned! I never really wanted it published on paper anyway. Think of all those trees…

Shelley Ontis lives in Illinois, surrounded by corn, cows and pick-up trucks. She claims it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Every year I’m optimistic about New Year’s resolutions, and every year they fail me miserably. Or, perhaps more to the point, I fail them. I’m one of those people who’s the poster child for every old cliché adage about “best intentions”. I get a lot of stuff done, don’t get me wrong. But those lofty New Year’s goals we set for ourselves every year…not so much. I handle the day-to-day things with flair, and maybe it’s my “God is in the details” mentality that makes it hard for me to throw myself wholeheartedly into vague, big-picture aims. I know what I want to accomplish today, I even know what I want to accomplish this weekend—but for the whole of a year? Who can say?

This year I was going to resolve to never make any more resolutions, because I hate feeling like a failure. But then I realized if I’m going to set myself up for failure anyway, I might as well do it with panache and bravado. I might as well choose resolutions that I’d make happen if I could wrinkle my nose like Bewitched and turn fantasy into reality. And it’s funny, in a sophomoric sort of way, to have the odd out-of-left-field resolution to proclaim when some well-meaning soul tries to make idle chit-chat out of the “Well, do you have any New Year’s resolutions?” line.

So I present to you my 2008 Resolution Bonanza Spectaculaire. Roll out the red carpet, put up the big tent, and suspend your disbelief…seriously.

In exact order, for no particular reason:

1. Take out a loan and secure the services of Posh Spice’s plastic surgeon.

    

2. Secure the services of David Beckham.

    

3. Hire a team of top-notch scientists to develop the ability to time travel; return to May of 2007; wrangle tickets to the 300 Los Angeles premier; and make good on my brilliant idea to somehow convince David Wenham to let me tag along—and to buy me a perfect Yves Saint Laurent and Manolo Blahniks just for the occasion.

    

4. Did I mention #2?

   
   Photograph by Maulleigh. Some rights reserved.

    

5. Buy season tickets to both West Ham United and Los Angeles Galaxy teams, and advance book all the necessary travel arrangements to be in East London for every home match, then on the other side of the world in Los Angeles for every match there. Sometimes simultaneously.

    

6. #5 probably should have been win the lotto in order to allow for #6. In fact, #1 might well have been win the lotto, too. I’d still want those Manolos from Wenham himself, hand-delivered to my door. Hey, I’d tip.

    

7. I can’t remember if I mentioned #2…

    

8. Read every single book I have purchased over the last 5+ years that, due to studies and the general business of life, I haven’t yet gotten around to reading. And trust me, we’re talking a lot of books. I’ve had to empty out chests of drawers, donate my clothes to the needy, and use the storage space for unread books. 2008 would be The Year of the Really-Really-Really-Belated Oprah Book Club.

    

9. Figure out a way to get Entertainment magazine to stop sending me “WARNING: YOU’LL NEVER HEAR FROM US AGAIN” letters every week since I once subscribed back in, oh what was it…1982?

    

10. All the way to #10. You must’ve forgotten #2 by now. Take a moment to refresh your memory.

For all those with genuine 2008 Resolutions, I say: may you have better luck with them than I’ve ever had with mine. All the best to you and yours in the new year.

I’ll just be over here working on #2.

Dina Ely is a freelance writer, poet, and author of short fiction. Readers can contact her at dely723@yahoo.com

Opinion

“My daddy died this year in Iraq. I am going to give mommy the Angel pendant that daddy put on mommy when she was having me. I had it in my jewelry box since that day. I love my mommy.”

That is the text of an essay written by 6 year old Alexis, winner of the Libby Lu Hannah Montana essay contest. The lucky girl won a Libby Lu makeover plus tickets to see Montana live in NY in January, including airfare and accommodations. She even won a special Hannah Montana goodie bag. What little girl wouldn’t go to the end of the earth for such an opportunity?

Alexis made that trek—accompanied every step by her mother Priscilla Ceballos, who wanted her daughter to win at any cost. The end result was this: they created the entire tale of Alexis’s father dying in Iraq; in fact there’s no soldier involved whatsoever. Priscilla has admitted that she and her daughter “ […] did whatever we could do to win.”

Club Libby Lu, who chose Alexis’s entry presumably out of sympathy, is reviewing the matter. Their rules didn’t stipulate the entries needed to be true, and Priscilla is using that as the excuse for her behavior. As it presently stands, Alexis and Priscilla will retain the prize.

Detail of photograph by Jim Simonson. Some rights reserved.

Club Libby Lu’s glamorous stores are a great deal of fun for young girls. Even for older ones—I visited and made my own cosmetics there for the experience when I was in my mid-twenties. Yet if the company awards Alexis the prize they will be committing an injustice. They will teach impressionable children that taking advantage of loopholes, if not outright lying and cheating, is acceptable.

For the daughters of fathers who truly have died in Iraq, it’s a slight. Club Libby Lu should be ashamed to award a prize to a girl who claimed such a tragedy simply to win, when there may well have been children applying who’ve endured the real deal and remained silent. Lying to win is bad enough without also cheapening the sacrifices and suffering of others, which is precisely what Libby Lu will allow Alexis and Priscilla to do if they don’t revoke the prize.

I’m disappointed in Club Libby Lu and I hope as they review the situation they will reconsider their approach. Just because an essay contest could be open to creative interpretation doesn’t mean that lying—and however you paint it, it’s a lie—should be tolerated.

Sources & More information:

Fox Dallas / Fort Worth
MSNBC
The Dallas Morning News
WFAA
Wizbang
Yahoo News

2007 was The Year of the Social Network. It might as well be a new marker somewhere on an astrological calendar.

Every year Google & other search engines publish a report of the most searched-for terms over the previous 365 days. These terms constitute the “buzz”–what’s really hot on cyberspace and therefore in the real world. Often the buzz is intertwined with what’s big in entertainment, what’s being hotly marketed in stores, and major stories that make the news. The buzz is what matters to us—lots of us.

Of the top 10 fastest rising (global) searches in 2007, Google reports all terms involve social networking or sites with social interaction—except #1, which is the Apple iPhone.

Badoo, Facebook, and Hi5 (consistently among the top searches on Yahoo every day) are the three terms that represent sites designed solely for social networking. eBuddy, another term on Google’s top 10, is a web-based instant messenger allowing users to utilize accounts on MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, AOL AIM, and other popular options—even if the user’s access is otherwise blocked (such as instant messaging disabled at work or school). Again, a search term steeped in a social theme.

Online games with community features, for adults and children, also ranked highly this year. The wildly popular Second Life remains at the top of search engine charts, while up-and-comers WebKinz and Club Penguin [our review here] (both social sites for kids that involve virtual pets, like the once-juggernaut Neopets) underscore the fact that children today are very ‘net savvy. They’re a new powerhouse market on the www—WebKinz necessitates purchasing stuffed animals that can be played with online, so every child enjoying the WebKinz site is adding a little more cash to Ganz’s (the creators) pockets.

Video sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion also achieved global search stardom in 2007. YouTube is a phenomenon that’s now part of our everyday lexicon, as sure as if Merriam-Webster put it front and center on their dictionary. Sites like Break.com, Funny or Die (who will ever forget Pearl, the abusive 2 year old landlord in Will Ferrell’s short masterpiece this year?), and MySpace Videos also remain popular, but YouTube reigns supreme. Dailymotion was created to focus on animated videos, but a visit to the site reveals it is a cornucopia of live action as well. Both sites allow for user interaction, again bringing social networking into the scheme. Users can create channels, rate videos, leave comments, interact in groups, and more. (Tip for 2008: Keep an eye out for a growing niche video site with the same features, but focused solely on cute pooches: World Wide Fido.)

Google’s top 10 terms for the U.S. contains many of the same searches, with the addition of TMZ (notorious celebrity video and gossip site, which also encourages user interaction through comments), social networking site MySpace (the founders of which also made Barbara Walters’s list of the ten most fascinating people of 2007), tragic Anna Nicole Smith, breakout TV show Heroes, and the Transformers movie.

What we can take away from 2007’s buzz is that the Internet is once again the place for socializing. In its earliest days the ‘net was about interaction, too—before the “Information Superhighway” it was all bulletin boards and chat rooms, remnants of which can still be found in newsgroups such as Usenet. The emphasis now has come full circle. Sites like Facebook and MySpace invite people of all ages to keep up with existing friends and make new ones. The fact that so many sites are also geared towards children just goes to show this trend will not abate. A whole new generation of social networking is on the rise.

I think it will be a safe bet that such sites remain popular in 2008. Safe bets for regular searches will also include celebrities, movies, music, games, TV, and sports. In fact, Yahoo’s Buzz Index tracks all these categories daily, so they are sure to remain themes. But dotted here and there across the board will be sites that allow users to form relationships, network, promote themselves, share their creations, play games together, and otherwise engage in activities where it takes two (or millions) to tango.

Dina Ely is a freelance writer, poet, and author of short fiction. Readers can contact her at dely723@yahoo.com

My favorite Christmas movie, unlikely as it may be, is Trading Places. This 1983 comedy, masterfully directed by John Landis, may not be a traditional Christmas vehicle. But it’s set during the holidays, features at least one Santa (even if he is drunk, criminal, and suicidal), and carries an unmistakable–if deeply buried and rather subversive–Christmas message. In addition, it always cheers me up in the dark days of December because it’s simply one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

In the first few minutes all the pieces of the story are put in place. Mortimer and Randolph Duke are two wealthy commodity brokers who decide to play games with the lives of two innocent people. Louis Winthorpe III (brilliantly played by Dan Akroyd) is a respectable, successful employee of the Dukes’ commodity brokerage firm. He lives in a mansion, has a butler and a beautiful fiancée, and is seemingly set for life. His counterpoint is provided by Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy, back when he was still funny), a street hustler who pretends to be a war veteran and who is arrested when he accidentally bumps into Winthorpe while begging for change.

Mortimer and Randolph Duke are in the middle of a nature versus nurture discussion: what makes a person successful, his upbringing or his inherent qualities? They decide to use Winthorpe and Valentine as their guinea pigs in an experiment. Their plan is to discredit the rich, successful Winthorpe by implying that he has stolen company money and even by placing drugs in his desk. He is thrown in jail and his bank accounts are frozen. When he is released, his fiancée Penelope is waiting for him, but before she can embrace him the Dukes have paid a prostitute (Jamie Lee Curtis) to kiss him and beg him for more drugs. Now completely down and out, Winthorpe ends up taking refuge in the prostitute’s apartment.

Meanwhile, the Dukes have given Winthorpe’s job and mansion to former beggar Valentine. He’s gone from rags to riches, throwing wild parties for his friends, and succeeding at work by applying common sense to the commodities trading game. But when Winthorpe finds out why he lost his life of luxury, who stepped in his place, and who is to blame… things are about to change.

I don’t want to reveal the rest of the story because believe it or not this is only the set-up for a truly funny, though occasionally bittersweet, Christmas story. You can catch the movie on television (such as Comedy Central in the U.S.) during the Christmas season, but cable TV doesn’t do this masterpiece justice. To get the full experience, I recommend finding it on DVD. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Submitted by Stefan Raets. Stefan is a refugee from the corporate world. When he isn’t reading or writing, he’s probably feeding or diapering his newborn son.

If you have a technologically-inclined child, chances are you’ve heard of Club Penguin. It’s a virtual world not unlike Neopets (only considerably more interactive and eye-catching), but strongly geared towards children. Club Penguin is a Disney creation, and it has all the charm and dazzle you’d expect from a Disney venture.

I’m almost 30, but testing Club Penguin for this review I couldn’t help but marvel that even I could spend a good chunk of time there and be well-entertained. It’s filled with both interactive games (like a virtual version of the classic Connect Four) and games to play against the computer. There are lots of areas where children can chat, though chat seems to be the least popular feature. Dressing in costumes, collecting props, playing games, adopting pets, and other fun activities clearly rule the place.

© (c) 2007 Club Penguin Entertainment Inc.
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It’s Christmas, and the airwaves are a-buzz with holiday movies. We can watch countless classics like White Christmas or quirky forgettables like Mixed Nuts. Somewhere in between is the international, cross-media riff-raff I anticipate every year…the many, many, many retellings of Charles Dickens’s tale A Christmas Carol.

Photograph by Rob. Some rights reserved.

I love Dickensonian London. I adore the atmosphere, history, and culture. I just hate Dickens. He can put me to sleep in an opening paragraph—worse than Ernest Hemingway, and anyone who’s read The Old Man and the Sea understands the potency of that statement. But the exception to my Dickens rule is A Christmas Carol. It’s fun to read and even more fun to see acted out in varied and occasionally very creative ways.

It’s serious deja vu for Dickens fans, and I’m sure many strongly object to concepts like Susan Lucci playing a female version of Scrooge, or D-List Diva Kathy Griffin laying down the law as the Ghost of Christmas Past. But I love it! Every twist in the tale, every unique angle, and every bit of traditional story tossed into the mix entertains me from start to finish.

I go out of my way to watch A Christmas Carol remakes regardless of the time of year. As a result I have a lengthy list of versions I enjoy. But in the interest of your eyesight, dear reader, I’ll pare it down to the short list of remakes well worth seeing. This list is chock-full of spoilers, so read with caution.

• Mickey’s Christmas Carol, an animated Disney picture released in 1983. I was four when it dropped and approximately six when it crossed my radar, but there was easily an entire year when I obsessed over this cartoon. Scrooge McDuck (think an older, crankier Donald), Mickey as Bob Cratchit, Goofy as Marley’s Ghost, Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past…the list goes on and on. All of my cherished Disney characters brought the story to life. It was my first A Christmas Carol experience and will always be my favorite. Major flashback: I cried and cried during the Ghost of Christmas Future sequence when they revealed the fate of Tiny Tim, and a heartbroken Mickey weeps over his son’s grave…
• Ebbie, a made-for-tv flick from 1995, starring Susan Lucci as Elizabeth “Ebbie” Scrooge. She’s the same Scrooge, only anatomically altered; with one or two tweaks in her tale she is the character to a T. Susan Lucci takes it all a bit too seriously–as only she can–but her performance still sparkles. It’s a heartwarming take on the story and the first time I saw a female Scrooge. I liked the feminine twist; somehow when she comes to her senses on Christmas morning she seems to shift from a masculine to maternal persona, and the transformation fascinates me. Massive plus: the divine Molly Parker (Deadwood, Pure, Six Feet Under) plays two roles: Ebbie’s sister and niece, respectively. Double the delight! And for a nice performance, watch for Wendy Crewson (24, To Gillian on Her 37^th Birthday) as “Roberta” Cratchit.
• Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, a UK holiday offering from Rowan Atkinson and the Blackadder gang, released in 1988. (Suddenly I feel very old!) It’s A Christmas Carol as only Blackadder could approach it: Atkinson reprises his famous character as “Ebenezer Blackadder”, and the entire cast of guffaw-worthy characters like Baldrick (otherwise known as “Sod-off Baldrick”, Tony Robinson), Queen Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson), Prince George (Hugh Laurie), and Lord Melchett (Stephen Fry) round out the oddball black comedy. Clever addition to the tale: Blackadder’s plagued with visions of his ancestors and descendants–which turn him from a good-natured, gentle man into the conniving, misanthropic Blackadder we all know and love.
• A Diva’s Christmas Carol, made-for-tv & aired in 2000. Diva extraordinaire Williams is “Ebony” Scrooge, one member of a successful R&B trio, whom she wantonly casts aside for a solo career. (Even at seven years old it’s a cautionary tale for Beyoncé Knowles!) It’s a completely harmless film that’s fun for its kitsch. And Kathy Griffin positively shines as the Ghost of Christmas Past. This one still gets a fair bit of Lifetime TV airplay so check your TV guides! Word of warning: Although she plays her character perfectly, when Vanessa sings in a concert sequence at the end of the film it is absolutely painful. I’m not sure what happened to her—once upon a time she had a decent voice. As of 2000 that claim is well and truly dead.
• Scrooged, last to be mentioned here but certainly not least. This is also from 1988, a great year for witty Dickens remakes! Bill Murray could not be funnier in the role of Frank Cross, who is essentially Scrooge. The application of the story to the cutthroat television industry is genius–I imagine that if Dickens was alive and writing his tale today, he’d set it in showbiz. There are so many standout performances that make this film a total treat–Bobcat Goldthwait as a disgruntled ex-employee gone postal, Carole Kane as the horribly abusive Ghost of Christmas Past, Alfre Woodard (Desperate Housewives, Radio, Miss Evers’ Boys) as the Cratchit-esque Grace Cooley, and Jamie Farr as a disgusting but hilarious Jacob Marley. Unforgettable moments: the executive lunch when Murray suffers a long string of gruesome hallucinations. His comical shouts, gesticulations, and slapstick act floor me every time. Moment #2 comes after one ghostly visit, when Murray finds homeless Herman frozen–another tearjerker!

Photograph by Kevin Dooley. Some rights reserved.

A Christmas Carol simply is Christmas to me. It certainly doesn’t feel like the holidays until one or more remakes grace my television screen. I doubt anyone could watch the aforementioned titles and come away untouched—be it a laugh, a cry, or a lift in Christmas spirit. So next time you’re looking for an entertaining Christmas story with a dose of emotion and a holiday high, look no further than the many treatments of Dickens’s only tolerable masterpiece!

Dina Ely is a freelance writer, poet, and author of short fiction. Readers can contact her at dely723@yahoo.com

by Shelley Ontis

My family like to call me “Scrooge” and “Grinch” because I dread Christmas each year. They say I hate Christmas, but that’s really not true. I enjoy it from about 9pm on Christmas Eve until bedtime on Christmas Day. I say that’s long enough. Just because the moment Halloween is over there seems to be this timer tick-tick-ticking down the days and hours we have remaining to get it all done doesn’t mean I have to like it.

By the time my daughter goes to bed on Christmas Eve–with everything finally bought, baked, checked off a list, and mailed–I feel like Scrooge and Grinch have nothing on me! I could out-bah-humbug the best of them. I want it over yesterday. I want to sleep a while and not have to hear a “Merry Christmas” or a sleigh bell for the rest of my life.

Then I watch my favorite holiday movie, A Christmas Story, while I wrap “Santa” presents for the next morning. And I feel a little less like grabbing the bell from a volunteer outside a store and chucking it across the parking lot as far as I can.

A Christmas Story is set a few years before my time, but despite the obvious difference in dress, cars, and kitchen décor, the atmosphere in that movie matched that of my childhood. I had the stay-at-home mom who worried about what the neighbors thought and annually cooked the big turkey dinner. I had the old man who tackled every home improvement project much like Darren McGavin tackled the persnickety furnace, with great zeal and creative adult language that I, like Ralphie, was not supposed to ever have heard. We had the hillbilly bumpkin neighbors with many dogs—no, wait, we were the bumpkins with the dogs, but I digress.

Who hasn’t had to suck on a bar of soap for some spoken infringement? Well, okay, maybe not everyone, though it was popular when I was a kid. But who hasn’t had her old man glare at her, after being mostly patient for a little while, and demand her to shut up? Who hasn’t been afraid of a playground bully, and didn’t they all have yellow eyes?

Ralphie’s childhood could have been mine, twenty years later, and his desperate longing for that BB gun could have been mine, if you changed the BB gun into a 3-speed bicycle or my very own 8-track cassette player (state of the art at the time).

Photograph by Paddy Patterson. Some rights reserved.

A Christmas Story is, at its heart, about avarice. But it’s a child’s avarice, the innocent and even encouraged greed that we all felt at Christmas. (I dare say, some still feel it.) And instead of beating us over the head with some syrupy moral at the end like so much predictable Christmas fare, it turns out to be okay that he wanted that BB gun so badly he could think of nothing else all December. When a BB ricochets and we hear the crunch of his glasses underfoot, we giggle and shrug and think, “well at least he didn’t shoot his eye out”. The movie understands we’ve all been there: we’ve skinned our knees after begging for those metal wheels that clip onto our shoes, and we’ve danced on the bed when we’re not supposed to and heard the sickening crack of the new 8-track player hitting the floor. And then frantically tried to figure out a way to make ourselves look blameless!

We did that stuff, like Ralphie, because we were kids. And though messy, loud, and destructive at times, it’s okay to be a kid. And it’s okay to be an imperfect parent, too, doing the best you can with what you have.

The old man in A Christmas Story goes to work in the morning, comes home at night, and clearly has left the brunt of the child-raising to his wife, who seems to cook the same dinner perpetually and still can’t get the smallest one to eat in any kind of socially acceptable manner. Sound familiar? But they love each other. The old man and his wife have a tender moment at the end, drinking wine and watching the snow fall. Mother and son bond in a new way with the secret about the fight (and more cursing), as do son and father. If you missed Darren McGavin’s slight smile of amusement after Ralphie drops the F-bomb, you need to watch it again.

In a time when it seems that Christmas is about nothing more than going and doing and getting, this movie inspires in me a kind of humorous nostalgia, a feel-good feeling without the saccharine greeting card sentiment. I can’t seem to find that anywhere else. So I watch A Christmas Story while I wrap my daughter’s presents on Christmas Eve, a tradition that officially heralds in my Christmas Spirit.

For a couple of hours I’m taken back to my own childhood and the Christmases I loved, and all the Christmases with my daughter. I think of her running from her room each year like Ralphie and Randy did, and like I did, hoping for that one special thing that Santa just had to bring–because Christmas is magical and Santa knows everything. I watch it and reminisce, and I love Christmas again.

Until December 26^th.