Another Christmas Story

If you are a fan of the movie “A Christmas Story” you know that it has developed almost a cult-like following since it was first produced in 1983. I belong to this cult. I simply have to see this movie every year. (Although we don’t have a leg lamp, we do like to sing a chorus or two of “Fa-Ra-Ra-Ra” and refer to fragile parcels as “fra-gee-lay.”)

So when Ken said that a musical version of “A Christmas Story” was playing on stage in Chicago and would I like to go to see it, I was raring to go. We went this past weekend.

The movie is set in 1940 in Indiana. For me, it renders my childhood in the 1950s in Manitoba pretty much right on the money. Those of you who have seen the movie, know these scenes well.

The movie, and the musical, open with department store windows with animated toy displays that whole families would come downtown to see.  In my home town, these wonders were at Eaton’s department store – a dazzling display every year that would make a kid’s eyes grow as big as saucers. (My Canadian friends will also remember that you’d reach the verge of heat stroke shopping in the big store wearing your heavy winter coat, boots, gloves, hat and scarf. You’d have to carry them because you’d expire otherwise, but once you added in some parcels, you’d overheat for sure. On the way out, you’d stop at the giant bronze statue of Timothy Eaton at the entrance of the store to pull all your stuff on again and then you'd embrace the welcome blast of minus 30 degree frigid cold when you walked out again into the wind howling down Portage Avenue. Good times.)

Waiting in line to see Santa was both excruciatingly exciting and nerve wracking. I was one of those kids who was nervous about the whole episode and my childhood photos are testament to that fact. In one of them I’m looking sideways at Santa like I’m thinking he might be a mass murderer.

Just like in “A Christmas Story”, my Old Man battled “clinkers” in our cranky coal furnace. Up through the registers it sent groans and creaks and Dad’s cursing along with sudden blasts of black soot that settled throughout the house.

Every year Dad would bring home a tree so big that it needed to be hauled up and down from the basement a half-dozen times where, cursing, he would saw chunks off the top and bottom until he got it to fit the height of the living room (it never occurred to anyone that he might have measured it.) We never had a tree that looked quite symmetrical. He’d plug the lights into an outlet extension that had so many cords running into it that it looked like a plate of spaghetti. Every year the first lighting of the tree would blow a fuse, eliciting more curses and a search for a flashlight and a new fuse – or a penny to pop into the fuse circuit. (How did he not ever burn the house down? Maybe this is when I learned to spend sleepless nights imagining untold calamities.)

That was me, like the kid in the movie, wearing the snowsuit in which I could barely move, with the long scarf wound around and around my forehead, nose and mouth so that only my eyes would be showing.  (My grade one teacher had a deft hand with this technique. She used to hold one end of your scarf against your forehead and then spin you around holding the scarf out until the ends met and she could tuck the loose end in. You’d be dizzy for a few minutes, but the scarf was insurance against getting frostbite somewhere on your face on the walk home from school. It might be 30 below — but, by God, we walked!)

And of course, like Ralphie in the show, I worked every angle to make sure Mum and Dad knew what I longed to get for Christmas. (You didn’t want to chance the whole thing to Santa alone. I mean, what if….?)

The musical version of the movie we saw in Chicago turned out to be funny and warm-hearted — the highlight being a dance number featuring The Old Man and chorus doing a kick-line with leg lamps.

One sweet and sentimental song came at the end when the mother sings about all the crazy things that have happened, all the disasters that have befallen the family this Christmas, but it is their Christmas story, after all, theirs alone and totally to be cherished.

After the show, Ken and I wandered out of the theatre onto the busy, dazzling streets of Chicago. We went to look at Macy’s animated windows decorated with silver-glittered fairy tale creatures commanding dancing, twirling toys. We hurried along brightly lit, sparkling, Michigan Avenue's “Magnificent Mile” with our collars turned up and our gloved hands holding on tight to each other’s. We returned to our hotel in time for the Friday night chocolate buffet — oh, heaven. As if on cue, a light snow began to transform the city into a giant snow globe.

There were tons of people on the street, imaginative animated figures in shop windows, Salvation Army bell-ringers on every corner, a brass quartet playing Christmas carols. We pinched ourselves to make sure we hadn’t time traveled back to the 1950s.

There is truth in art – and even in musicals. Maybe something magical happened while we were in the theatre. This is our Christmas story - and we're sticking to it.

(And if you have never seen the movie, “A Christmas Story”, you will surely get your chance because it runs for 24 hours from 8:00 pm on December 24^th through to 8:00 pm on December 25^th, check your local listings.)