The beloved holiday movie A Christmas Story ("You'll shoot your eye out!") is based on two short stories by Indiana native Jean Shepherd, who is also the narrator of the movie. The events in the movie come from five of Shepherd's short stories, contained in his books In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters. (The five stories were also later compiled into the book A Christmas Story after the movie was made.) Shepherd's stories tell the tales of his childhood in Hammond, Indiana during the 1930s and 1940s.
The fictional town of Hohman, Indiana, where young protagonist Ralphie and his family live in A Christmas Story, is based on Hammond. So, Hammond hosts an annual event called A Christmas Story Comes Home.
The event consists of five miniature animated displays depicting scenes in the movie, which were originally window displays at the New York City Macy's store.
This first scene shows the neighbors' dogs, The Bumpus Hounds, eating the turkey Ralphie's mom made for Christmas dinner:
Next to this display was a stack of Lifebuoy soap, which is the soap Ralphie has to suck on after he says a bad word. I smelled the soap in the gift shop and, woo-wee, that would be a punishment.
Each display had a TV next to it, showing the scene depicted in the display (on mute, with closed-captioning). Here are Bill and Nathan watching the Santa's Mountain scene:
And here's the diorama of the scene:
This scene shows Ralphie's parents sitting by the fire on Christmas night, with Ralphie upstairs in his bed, cradling his BB gun:
Here's Nathan in front of the scene where Ralphie's friend Flick gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole, on a dare (a triple-dog dare):
This display shows Ralphie's dad setting up the leg lamp he won in a contest:
We probably should have showed Nathan the movie before we went to the exhibit. Having never seen the movie, he was a little lukewarm on the whole outing:
But you could purchase a craft kit in the gift shop for $1.00, and since two of Nathan's very favorite things are crafts and stuff you can buy, he perked up a little:
Next we wrote a letter to Santa. I wrote the letter and Nathan signed it:
At his parent-teacher conference last week, the teacher gave us a handout that said that if a kid starts kindergarten not knowing how to hold a writing instrument correctly, he or she is already behind on Day 1. Phew, at least I think we have that one covered. Unfortunately, he willingly chose to write his name backwards (he knows the right way) and with alternating huge and teeny letters. I mean, I guess he's an outside-the-box thinker with age-appropriate fine-motor skills?
Here he is mid-signature, no doubt pondering future ways to annoy us:
Mailing the letter:
Finally, it was time to see Santa! Despite his previous attitude, he did pose for this most adorable photo:
The slide down Santa's mountain was a little bit smaller than the one in the movie. Here's footage:
When it was time to leave because we'd seen the whole exhibit, Nathan cried, "WHAT?! We're leaving already?!"
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