Here is young Ralphie Parker's shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine his mother and father's pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie's duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill and, most crucially, Ralphie's unstoppable campaign to get Santa-or anyone else-to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana-the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox.

Gene shepherd a christmas story