Monday, December 24, 2012

"A Christmas Story," commercilization and Vic and Sade

Christmas was the time of year that writer Paul Rhymer took the time to make fun of the most.

He made fun of the commercialization of this time of year (the many Christmas card sellers, for instance) and the badly-written poems inside the cards and the fact that you HAVE to buy a present or send a card for/to other people because they expect it.

In episode 39-12 01 Vic's Christmas Card List, Sade is upset at Vic because he has 57 on his Consolidated Kitchenware and Sacred Stars of the Milky Way card list alone.   Vic doesn't seem to really want to send the cards but feels he has to.  Let's not even get into what Sade feels about his list.  It's also inferred that the argument they have about sending these cards out happens every year.

The same thing or something very similar, happens in 41-11-05 Vic's Christmas Gift List Too Long.

There are also two episodes that show that Vic was always in charge of buying his boss, Mr. Ruebush, a Christmas present every year.  To him, buying the present was drudgery.

Once, Mr. Ruebush elected Sade to do his Christmas shopping for him.

Another time, Smelly Clark "solicited" Christmas gifts from people he hardly knew by sending them letters from (basically) stolen Butler House hotel stationary.  This prompted Rush to want to do the same thing.

Everywhere you look on the show, Christmas is not the traditional, Norman Rockwell idea of Christmas but rather it's about the almighty dollar.

We might assume that Jean Shepard's story (In God We Trust, All Other's Pay Cash) that turned into the film, A Christmas Story, was somewhat based on Paul Rhymer's scripts about Christmas.



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