Mere days after Saturday Night Live performed a sketch about how mothers don't get their due on Christmas, here's an article which poses a good question: Can We Talk about the Mom in A Christmas Story?
At the end of “A Christmas Story,” Ralphie and Randy tear open their many presents, and The Old Man opens a gift from Mother, a shiny blue bowling ball. As I watched her observe her husband and son’s delight around the Christmas tree, I noticed that she was holding something that could either be a gold spatula or a fly swatter. I hoped that whatever her gift was, it was not either of those things. Suddenly, on the umpteenth viewing of this movie, I needed to know if this woman, the saint of the film, got a Christmas present.
Frantic Google searches combining “mother” “Christmas Story” “gift” and “spatula” yielded nothing, so I emailed A Christmas Story House & Museum in Cleveland, the site of the actual house from the movie, hoping for answers.
“Who cares what the mom gets for Christmas,” replied the museum’s owner Brian Jones. Turns out he was joking, but still. “No one has ever asked me that in nearly two decades in the business,” he wrote.
According to Jones, Mother is indeed holding a fly swatter. If she gets any presents, we never see them. Is her Christmas gift the fact that her husband and sons are all happy and fulfilled? Where is her reward for multitasking and keeping everyone fed and clothed and protected from blizzards, all while sacrificing her own time and energy to make yet another cabbage stew? They could have at least given her a card!
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| "A flyswatter? How 'bout I break this goddam thing on your fat white ass?" |
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