It stars Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, and Peter Billingsley, and follows a young boy and his family's misadventures during Christmas time in December 1940.

[3] In 2012, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

As a 9-year-old boy living in Northwest Indiana in December 1940, all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, Ralphie sees a disgruntled Santa at Higbee's Department Store, and he expresses his desire, only to be hurriedly brushed off with the same warning.

Ralphie accidentally steps on and breaks the glasses while trying to find them; he makes up a cover story about an icicle falling from the roof of the garage and hitting his eye, which fools his mom and keeps him from getting in trouble.

Interspersed with the main story are several loosely related vignettes involving the Parkers: The basis of the screenplay is a series of monologues written and performed by Jean Shepherd on the radio.

[22] Shepherd later read "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder nails the Cleveland Street Kid" and told the otherwise unpublished story "Flick's Tongue" on his WOR Radio talk show, as can be heard in one of the DVD extras.

[23] Bob Clark stated on the DVD commentary that he became interested in Shepherd's work when he heard "Flick's Tongue" on the radio in 1968.

Additional source material for the film, according to Clark, came from unpublished anecdotes that Shepherd told live audiences "on the college circuit".

[25][26] The film is set in Hohman, Indiana, a fictionalized version of Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, the only Hoosier city to border Chicago.

[27] Local references in the film include Warren G. Harding Elementary School and Cleveland Street (where Shepherd spent his childhood).

The Old Man is also revealed to be a fan of the Bears (whom he jokingly calls the "Chicago Chipmunks") and White Sox, consistent with living in northwest Indiana.

In commemoration of the setting, the City of Hammond holds an annual exhibit regarding the film in November and December, including a statue recreating the scene where Ralphie's friend Flick freezes his tongue to a flagpole.

Since Higbee's was exclusive to northeast Ohio,[29] the department store referred to in Shepherd's book and the film is most likely Goldblatt's, located in downtown Hammond (with the Cam-Lan Chinese Restaurant three doors down on Sibley Avenue).

Higbee's vice president Bruce Campbell agreed to take part in the project on the condition he be allowed to edit the script for cursing.

[34] The compass and sundial were placed on Ralphie's BB gun, but on the opposite side of the stock due to Peter Billingsley being left-handed.

Ralphie's Little Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Pin bears the date 1940 (and is the real-life decoder pin released to society members that year, though by that time Ovaltine had ceased its sponsorship and Quaker was the primary sponsor of the series), the parade in front of Higbee's features characters from MGM's version of The Wizard of Oz, which was released in 1939, a 1939 calendar is seen in one scene,[37] and World War II, which the United States entered in December 1941, is never mentioned.

Although the director and author have said that the year has been obfuscated, some sources, including The New York Times and CBS News, have dated the film to 1940 or the early 1940s.

[44] Initially overlooked as a sleeper film,[45] A Christmas Story was released a week before Thanksgiving 1983 to moderate success, earning about $2 million in its first weekend.

[50] Vincent Canby's mostly negative The New York Times review complained that "the movie's big comic pieces tend only to be exceedingly busy.

Though Mr. Billingsley, Mr. Gavin [sic], Miss Dillon and the actress who plays Ralphie's school teacher (Tedde Moore) are all very able, they are less funny than actors in a television situation comedy".

The site's consensus reads: "Both warmly nostalgic and darkly humorous, A Christmas Story deserves its status as a holiday perennial.

[70] The lawsuit was dropped in January 2012 after Warner Bros. revealed that the figurine showed a "generic face" that has been used on them since 2006 and that the statute of limitations had run out.

[73] The film first aired on television on premium cable networks The Movie Channel,[74] HBO,[75] and Showtime,[76] as early as December 1985, followed by Cinemax in 1986.

Discovery) has maintained ownership of the broadcast rights, and since the mid-1990s, they have continued to air the film increasingly on both TBS and TNT throughout the holiday season annually.

In 2004, after TNT switched to a predominantly drama-centered programming format, sister network TBS, under its comedy-based "Very Funny" moniker, took over carriage of the marathon.

[93] In 2007, new all-time ratings records were set,[94] with the highest single showing (8:00 p.m. Christmas Eve) drawing 4.4 million viewers.

The PBS series American Playhouse produced two subsequent television film adaptations featuring the same characters, also with Shepherd narrating: The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski and Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss.

[120] The musical was directed by John Rando with choreography by Warren Carlyle and featured Dan Lauria as Jean Shepherd.

[122] The musical was then adapted for television as the three hour A Christmas Story Live!, which aired on the Fox network in the United States on December 17, 2017.