An Unlikely Holiday Tradition :: A Christmas Story Essays

An Unlikely Holiday Tradition â€Å"People look forward to this,† Ward said. â€Å"It’s become a Christmas hit for us. People just keep their TV’s on.† Walter Ward is a spokesperson for the television station TNT. In 1998, TNT called it a â€Å"Ralphie marathon.† According to Ward, it was only a â€Å"stunt† but, when TNT saw how much the viewers liked it, it became a sort of tradition. Each year TNT runs a twenty-four hour marathon of the movie, A Christmas Story. That’s seventeen times from seven o’clock on Christmas Eve until seven o’clock on Christmas Day. The question remaining is, â€Å"how has A Christmas Story become a holiday television tradition?† A Christmas Story is a â€Å"low budget movie about a sort-of-dysfunctional family.† The movie took place in a small Indiana town in the 1940’s and follows a boy’s quest for a weapon, â€Å"that would now be illegal at any school† (Bryant). Ralphie Parker wanted just one thing for Christmas that year, â€Å"an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle† (Shepherd). His mission was to convince his parents, his teacher and even Santa that it was the perfect Christmas gift for a nine year old boy. To Ralphie’s dismay, they all disagreed and thought that a football would be a much better Christmas present and responded with, â€Å"You’ll shoot your eye out!† The movie was based on the novel written by Jean Shepherd called In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. It was a book based upon the opinion that, â€Å"childhood seems good in retrospect because we are not yet aware of the basic truth : that we’re all losers, that we die and death is a defeat† (Shepherd). Considering the circumstances of the movie, it is baffling that a Christmas movie which seems to be filled with dysfunction has become such an annual Christmas tradition. And tradition it is. In my family, A Christmas Story is on all throughout the day. Each year there is a battle at my grandparent’s house between the children and parents. The children cannot seem to pull themselves away from the television, while the parents beg for the children to join them at the table for Christmas dinner. In my opinion watching the movie over and over again never seems to get old.