Let’s get this out of the way up front; I love this movie and am here to sing its praises. If you love it as much as I do, this next bit may sting a little.

A Christmas Story is a facade of a narrative. It makes a mockery of several cardinal rules of screenwriting, leaving it no right to be as good as it turns out being.

Let the nitpicking begin…

There’s no overarching story goal. “Nonsense,” you may say. “Protagonist Ralphie wants to get an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time! If that’s not a story goal, I don’t know what is!” And here we arrive at the first big trick. As far as plot structure goes, this goal is a decoy.

The BB gun pursuit adeptly disguises itself well as a legitimate story goal. It’s established in the opening scene, and Ralphie takes several overt actions toward it; placing the ad in his mom’s issue of Look magazine, crafting his theme assignment at school to make a case for the blue steel beauty’s superiority to a football, bringing up the grizzly bears spotted in town (disclaimer: nothing in this blog post should be interpreted as hunting advice, and we would never recommend going after grizzly bears with a BB gun). These attempts are all swatted down like flies and Ralphie’s mission feels more and more hopeless, yet another way it appears to follow a proper plot trajectory. BUT… these setbacks don’t result in Ralphie learning anything, acquiring new skills or insights, or toughening him up to rise to the achievement of the goal.

This brings us to another issue; Ralphie doesn’t really develop as a character and has no arc.  He doesn’t even overcome the antagonistic mantra “you’ll shoot your eye out,” as he very nearly does. (For the record, I’m so glad this incident didn’t dissuade him from wanting the BB gun even a little. That would’ve ruined it for me.) I’ll discuss this more below, and address the counterarguments you’re muttering right now.

The resolution comes from the one adult in Ralph’s life whom he didn’t appeal to on his journey; the Old Man. The prize is there on Christmas morning, not as a result of any of Ralphie’s efforts, but because his dad wanted to surprise him with it. Sure, it’s possible that Mom passed along Ralpie’s Christmas wish after he let it slip in the kitchen, but going by the Old Man’s child-like giddiness (as only the great Darren McGavin could pull off) while Ralphie was opening it, it looks to be something he’d planned all along, regardless of his son’s coaxing.

So, he wanted the BB gun, some things happened, and then he got it. Hardly a killer logline. How does a story get arranged in such a way?

A Christmas Story is based on a book of several fun short stories by the great Jean Shepherd, but high-quality source material does not a great movie make. If you don’t believe me, just search something like “great books adapted into terrible movies” on YouTube, and I’ll see you in a few hours.

Combining multiple short stories into one film (that’s not an anthology) brings about numerous hazards, namely that it’ll come out like a disjointed episodic series of stuff that happens, not a cohesive story.  And indeed, even if you haven’t read the book (as I haven’t), you can see the separate story threads in there. Several of them don’t focus on our protagonist Ralphie, or even really involve him. Sure, some of them are bona fide subplots, like the Scut Farkus affair and the Major Award impasse, but others don’t qualify (the tongue freezing to the lamppost, The secret message from Little Orphan Annie, the mouth washing for saying the f— word, etc.), as they largely come up and get resolved in one scene. Plus nearly ALL of these break a sacred rule of subplots and asides; they don’t serve the main plot in any way. They don’t cross paths with Ralphie’s quest for Old Blue, they don’t move the story forward by changing the status of the story world, they’re just there… for fun (a factor we’ll come back to).

With all this going against it, how did it turn out so good?

Brilliant story construction. 

The filmmakers knew this script’s inherent flaws and challenges, leaned into them, and produced something not only passable but truly special. By harnessing the universal themes around being a kid at Christmastime, A Christmas Story does plotting all wrong while appearing to do it all right, that appearance becomes our reality and shapes the viewing experience, so the flaws cease to matter in the least.

While there’s no throughline of Ralphie achieving his goal, there is a clear ticking clock established immediately, leading us up to Christmas, that creates a timeline and framework upon which the Parker family and friends’ disparate episodes are woven so seamlessly that we don’t question them for a second. It’s the winter Christmas season, so kids dare each other to stick their tongues to metal objects, companies run aggressive ad campaigns for sponsors like Ovaltine and scammy sweepstakes for gaudy prizes like leg lamps, furnaces are working overtime and may need to be battled, and tire blowouts are more common. They sprout up as naturally as the grass.

Back to Ralphie’s character development, or lack thereof, he does have a few mini-arcs in some of the sequences. The most prominent is that he learns to stand up for himself when he wades into Scut Farkus and beats him to a pulp, completing a solid subplot. He also learns something about the dark side of mass media advertising when Little Orphan Annie’s secret message is an Ovaltine ad.

While none of these serve the main conflict, they do inspire empathy and relatability like few other pieces ever have, which goes a long way in explaining why this film is played for 24 hours straight every Christmas Day on at least one network.

Your humble blogger naturally exaggerated the point of “does plotting all wrong” earlier. The employment of setup and payoff is executed to perfection here.  Take the Bumpus’s Hounds thread, for example. They show up a few times as extras for what seems like comedic garnish, becoming an organic part of the movie’s landscape, only to emerge as a major plot influence when they infiltrate the Parker house, eat the Christmas turkey, and displace the family from their home so they can be introduced to Chinese Turkey. And that’s only one example of how adeptly story elements are introduced and played out across multiple episodes.

One last factor that can’t be overlooked or overstated in a piece like this is the charm, style, and just plain fun of the direction and wordsmithing. It reminds me of a quote I heard from Karl Iglesias, author of Writing for Emotional Impact; “you can break every rule except one, be interesting”. The dialog, comedic timing, and creative craziness of the recurring calamities of this movie keep us so charmed in the moment, that there’s little concern for the big picture or how it all connects, and while we writers would like to always be firing on all cylinders, this is something we should all relish, as it’s rare to reach this high a level of captivation.

So, there you have it; a dissection of a beloved holiday classic that hopefully we can all learn from. Rules can be bent, broken, and mangled; and you can still come out with a timeless classic on your hands if you sprinkle in the right doses of the right storytelling magic.