Grace in a Broken World
DECEMBER 21, 2024
by Quentin Schultze
The most popular movie in America now is probably “A Christmas Story,” viewed annually by 50 million Americans on cable TV alone—rivalling the number of adults who will attend church this Christmas, according to Pew Research.
Yet few people know that the movie is actually a series of parables about human brokenness and God’s grace.
I know, because I befriended and taught with the film’s infamous screenwriter, Jean Shepherd. He loved telling tales about troublesome male obsessions, from BB rifles to leg lamps, sprinkled with glimmers of unmerited grace.
Shepherd believed that men get obsessed with “things,” such as rifles, cars, decoder rings, and even leg lamps. Foremost is men’s desire for women. Everything else that men chase is a secondary projection of their desire for the ideal female.
According to Shepherd, this male obsession is genetic, emanating from primordial cravings. He wanted his movies to begin with shots of puffing factory smokestacks, symbols of ancient male desires.
In the film, the Old Man wins a “major award”—a leg lamp—in a newspaper contest. The lamp has become the most famous visual icon from the popular movie.
Shepherd told me that the leg lamp was the Old Man’s “trophy wife.” The Old Man hopes to “turn on the neighborhood” with his “major award”—like parading his sexy icon before unhappy clodhoppers stuck in claustrophobic marriages with second-rate women.
When I pressed him on the gender aspect of his worldview, he told me about his absent father. Around the time that Shepherd graduated from high school, his rarely present dad packed up a suitcase and left for good in a convertible with his blonde secretary.
Shepherd’s father said to him, “Kid, you’ll understand when you get older.” Shepherd said that he never saw his father again.
The character of the “Old Man” in Shepherd’s many stories rarely refers to his sons by name. Shepherd believed that most men don’t really want kids, anyway. Families tie them down. Men are always hunting for fresh “trophies”—especially fancy cars or other technologies if not females.
Shepherd was married four times. His second marriage produced two children. Yet the successful Shepherd became the very kind of absent father that he had experienced growing up in Hammond, Indiana.In my view, Shepherd never came to terms psychologically with being abandoned by his father.
Like more than a few entertainers, Shepherd suffered with a grand ego and low self-esteem. He died a year after his last wife passed away, lonely and cynical, but also amazed at the joy he had given to radio listeners, viewers, live audiences, and readers. His fans adored him, but they had no idea how essential their idolization was for their star’s meager happiness.
In his career as well as his fourth marriage, Shepherd found unexpected joy. He was, like Ralphie in the movie, surprised that he received such a special gift.
The Old Man is the one major character in the movie that Ralphie never asks for the Red Ryder BB rifle. Maybe Ralphie believed that his case was hopeless, especially after being turned down by Mom, his teacher, and even Santa—who boots poor Ralphie down the slide at Higbee’s Department Store. But the Old Man comes through with the unexpected gift, astounding Ralphie and Mom.
At the end of the movie, Mom and the Old Man reconcile. They sit together on the sofa, looking at the gently falling snow through the same window that had been marred by the trophy wife (and amidst Mom’s plants, which symbolized the Garden of Eden). The Old Man’s obsession has been buried in the back yard with the tawdry lamp that Mom intentionally shattered.
Watching the scene as Shepherd’s former friend and colleague, however, I know that new male obsessions with emerge in subsequent tales. Mom, as temporary hero, will have to break future male fixations.
The film ends with “Silent Night”—peace on earth. It becomes a 90-minute parable of unexpected grace in a world eternally fractured by male obsessions.
Dr. Schultze is an emeritus professor at Calvin University and author of “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out! Life Lessons from the Movie ‘A Christmas Story.’”