Ralphie got it mostly right — Christmas past was better

Last Sunday, we watched “A Christmas Story Live!,” Fox’s live adaptation of the Christmas TV staple. Musicals are just not my thing, and live musicals make me really uncomfortable. I keep worrying someone is going to trip, or forget a line, and run off stage crying.

But the reaction in the papers and on the internet the next day was brutal, and it wasn’t because of the singing or acting. It focused on the idea that we’ve got to stop pretending Christmas way back when was always way better than Christmas present. The show tried to update the story by giving Ralphie some multicultural friends, introducing a Hanukkah number, and making the people in the Chinese restaurant the family goes to less stereotyped. They still cut off the duck’s head, but they were all very accomplished. But all that didn’t help. The verdict was clear — Ralphie’s mostly whiteChristmas was deemed uncool, and Christmas past is now considered Christmas passé.

Of course Christmas was better when you were a kid. No school, cookies everywhere and waking up to new toys. And the whole naughty or nice thing was clearly a hoax; some of the worst kids I knew got the best presents. But this got me to thinking about my Christmas pasts, and how I’d rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. If I make it to the end of the week, I will have experienced 57 of them. So I thought I’d take a trip back over the years. (Cue fog machine in 3, 2, 1 ….)

Christmas 1968: Felt queasy running down the steps Christmas morning but did not have the sense to refrain from hot cocoa while opening presents. I was too excited to even bring along the bucket my mom gave me. For months afterward, my toys all smelled like chocolate but in a very,very bad way. (1)

Christmas 1965: “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Gift that kept on giving. (8)

Christmas 1966: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” Ditto. (8)

Christmas 1969: Too old for the Santa thing, I pretended for my parents’ sake that I still believed, which was a good thing, till my older brother told kids on the block that I still believed — a bad thing. Much of early 1970 spent living down shame. (5)

Christmas 1971: Wanted a train set. Clearly asked for a train set. Stupid younger brother asked for little plastic Army men. Message (somehow!) lost in translation, and my parents reversed the gifts. Still bitter after all these years. (-1)

Christmas 1978: “Star Wars Holiday Special.” Still bitter about that one, too. (2)

Christmas 1982: Proposed in a swirling snowstorm on way to midnight service, just as bells chimed in Christmas. (10)

Christmas 1987: Living overseas in Hong Kong, spent entire Christmas Eve frantically looking for a Christmas tree to feel more at home. Finally, at around 10 p.m., happened upon a parking lot with trees, run by an American farmer, in overalls, who’d shipped the trees all the way from Montana on a whim. (8)

Christmas 1988: “A Very Brady Christmas.” Mike is trapped in a collapsed building on Christmas and can only find his way out by Carol singing Christmas carols at him in a warbly voice. Sat on the couch in my Cosby sweater and hated myself for getting choked up. (2)

Christmas 1998: Kids excited when their cousins from across the country converged on Pittsburgh and on Christmas morning engaged in a massive round robin of exchanging inexpensive toys. which all ended up broken on our floor by Christmas afternoon. (4)

Christmas 1999: My wife told me all she wanted for Christmas was a scarab bracelet. She did not make it clear that she wanted a nice scarab bracelet, not a $12 imitation stone piece of junk from the costume jewelry section. Turned out to be coldest Christmas ever. (3)

Christmas2000: Itold my wife the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a fly fishing rod. She thought I said fly fishing rod CASE. A little bit ofkarma at work here. (3)

Christmas 2006: Realized late on Christmas Eve that we’d managed to get presents for all the kids — except one. Frantic rewrapping into the wee hours, and on Christmas morning four kids were disappointed that they didn’t get everything they wanted and one kid was confused that he got everything he didn’t want. (3)

Christmas Present: Don’t know what this year will bring, but expecting it to be fairly quiet. Some of our kids will make it home, and some will be far away. Gifts these days are often personal checks,and there’s very little, if any, chaos, which is a good and, believe it or not, a bad thing. We will, of course, uphold our one family tradition, borrowed from Ralphie’s family. We will skip the turkey and just go out by ourselves… for Chinese food.