A Christmas Story

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A Christmas Story

“You’ll shoot your eye out kid, merry Christmas. Ho Ho Ho.” is probably one of the most popular lines of the 1983 Christmas classic, A Christmas Story, written by Jean Shepherd. According to The State Newspaper web site, “A Christmas Story is a low budget movie about a sort of dysfunctional family.” (Bryant) It is a dysfunctional tale about a nine year old boy named Ralphie growing up in 1940’s Indiana dreaming of the perfect Christmas gift, a Red Rider 200-shot Carbine Action Air Rifle. His parents, teacher and even Santa Clause believe otherwise. They all respond with “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Ralphie is determined to get his BB gun for Christmas. Along with the campaign for the BB gun, Ralphie and friends are typical kids. Each day from school they run away from a bully, Scott Farkus, a kid with “yellow eyes.” They even go as far as “triple dog daring” one of their best friends to stick his tongue to a frozen flag pole.

The State Newspaper web site is about articles in a newspaper in South Carolina. On December 25, 2001, a reporter by the name of Bobby Bryant who worked for The State watched the TNT (a television network) marathon, twenty four hours of A Christmas Story. He was intrigued to see the reasons that a network would go so far as to show a movie non-stop for twenty four hours straight. He decided to interview a number of people in order to find the answer, how A Christmas Story became an unlikely holiday tradition. Bryant interviewed Walter Ward, a spokesperson for TNT. Bryant wanted to know what TNT was thinking when they first decided to run A Christmas Story marathon. Ward said, “TNT first aired the marathon in 1998 as a “stunt.” When then marathon was over, they saw how the viewers loved it. It became a holiday tradition. People look forward to this; it’s become a Christmas hit for us. People just let their TVs on!”

In order to attain all of the information of A Christmas Story holiday tradition, I researched carefully The State Newspaper website. I found the web site of The State Newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina, written by Bobby Bryant, a very effective site.

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