Everybody already knows about the movie version 鈥�A Christmas Story,鈥� drawn from the late Jean Shepherd鈥檚 account of his boyhood quest to find a Red Ryder B.B. gun under the holiday tree. The movie, a staple of cable television each December, marks its 30th anniversary this year. I screen it at least once each Christmas season, but I also treat myself to a rereading of the Shepherd tale that inspired it. The story is a giddy joy from start to finish. 鈥淚 imagined innumerable situations calling for the instant and irrevocable need for a BB gun,鈥� Shepherd tells readers, 鈥済reat fantasies where I fended off creeping marauders burrowing through the snow toward the kitchen, where only I and I alone stood between our tiny huddled family and insensate Evil.鈥�
One of the happiest affirmations of our national good sense is the presence of 鈥淎 Christmas Story鈥� as a holiday classic, both as a film and as a book that鈥檚 still in print.
