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Central character Ralphie Parker narrates a series of vignettes of a particular Christmas season in December 1940. All the little lad wants is a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle but his mom, his teachers, and even Santa himself are adamant that he’ll shoot his eye out. Though A Christmas Story is set in the increasingly distant past, every year it feels distinctly recognizable for audiences experiencing their own latest Christmas stories. – Alec Bojalad
Christmas Vacation (1989)
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After heading off to Wally World and Europe in National Lampoon’s Vacation and National Lampoon’s European Vacation, respectively, there was only one place left to go for the Griswold family: Back home for Christmas. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation works because it understands that sometimes the most hellish vacations aren’t when you head off to visit family but when they come to visit you.
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Sort of like A Christmas Story before it, Christmas Vacation operates as a series of Christmas vignettes and joke setpieces, as an advent calendar leads up to the big day in question. Throughout it all, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) finds a comically big tree, destroys his home with said tree, then ruins his, his family, and the neighborhood’s life with increasingly preposterous trapping of Christmas. It all, of course, culminates in a felony kidnapping as most Christmases should. – AB
Elf (2003)
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Elf is easily one of the best Christmas movies of the past 20 years, if only because it doesn’t drown in sentiment, it’s got an original, delightful premise, and it benefits from excellent casting and a punchy script. Will Ferrell is perfect as Buddy, the human raised by elves as one of them at the North Pole. After becoming a thirtysomething adult, he leaves the safe confines of Santa’s workshop to find his human dad. The latter, a publisher of children’s books, is played with caustic zest by James Caan, and his gradual change of heart from cynicism and bitterness to warmth and love is the core of the movie.
