National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

GETTING THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS RIGHT

by Erica U.

All month I’ve been contemplating which holiday movie I wanted to write about and I’m embarrassed to tell you how much time I spent googling “obscure Christmas film.”

It wasn’t that I wanted to put on airs of sophistication or intellectualism (I watched several seasons of The Hills and went to see Superbad the night it came out; No illusions of classiness remain.) It was that I’ve always been pretty dissatisfied with the superficiality of most holiday movies.

Of course they’re all very sweet and sentimental…but in such an airy and obvious way. Turn over a new leaf, Embrace generosity, Realize how much you have to be grateful for. Epiphany, epiphany, epiphany, cue a Christmas carol, and wrap it all up in a tidy satin bow.

I wanted to discover a holiday movie with depth and complexity. But days in to its pursuit I realized the film that meant the most to me personally – and maybe even carried the purest messages - was the least highbrow of all: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

How appropriate!

Every year, we’d rent the movie on VHS or find it just starting on one of our five network television channels. My mom was always too antsy to watch – fussing around with meal preparations and past-due Christmas cards and obligatory decorations. But my dad – my dad stretched back that brown corduroy La-Z-Boy and committed himself to the tradition.

My dad loved Christmas Vacation more than most people. By that I mean he loved Christmas Vacation more than most people do. But I also mean he loved Christmas Vacation more than he loved most people. (Ok, I stole that joke from Homestar Runner. Sue me. Please don’t.)

For two hours each December, my dad didn’t have to be stoic or driven. He could simply laugh. And I’d cozy up beside him, tucked into the big calico couch in the basement and furtively watch him roll and roll at the slapstick. Literally wipe his eyes at Clark sliding down a collapsing ladder or the squirrel launching out of the Christmas tree. I’d watch his face relax and now, it occurs to me that maybe Clark’s well intended buffoonery made him go a little easier on himself.

At a glance, Clark Griswold and my dad could not have been more dissimilar men. My dad was confident and stubborn, mostly serious back then and always larger than life. He snow shoed and winter-camped in Canada, built cabins with his bare hands and hitchhiked to California at 17; slept on the beach and ate loaves of bread for meals when his parents refused to wire him a single dollar. My dad was an adventurer, a perfectionist, an unrelenting worker, a wandering soul chained to domestic responsibility.

From my four-foot, twelve year old vantage point, he was Right about everything – unquestionably Right. From this age, I can understand that he may not have seen himself – as a husband and father - with the same unwavering certainty. His plumbing business was slow to take off in those early years and we lived frugally. When they took a chance and moved back to Minnesota from Denver, they bought for a song three acres of land on a small town river and he built our house as we could afford it.

The first spring and summer and fall, we lived in a tiny camper trailer behind the framed in split-level. Three kids and a wife, each getting ready for their day in a six by twelve foot tin can. That first winter, we moved in by the time the snow came, but it was still all cement and sheetrock and dry wall. My mom helped us string popcorn and cranberries for the tree that we harvested from the untamed backyard and my dad sprung for a string of tiny white lights from Pamida. That year, I started the tradition of sleeping at the foot of the lit tree at least once before Christmas. 24 years later, and I’ve never had a prettier tree than the one that rose up from hand me down clothes and roughed in bathrooms and no beds.

Those were the first years he tilled and planted the enormous garden that feeds us still. But maybe he didn’t see how worthy that was. This food producing and building of homes alone, from scratch like a super hero. Maybe he saw instead our faces the year he gave us too small, brown velour Carhart jackets from Fleet Farm. Picture the scoffing, snotty preteen hearts of my sister and me as we held up these clearance rack, boys jackets that came to our waists and forearms. This was Christmas, we thought? With such horrible ingratitude. And you could see the confusion on his face. They were new and warm, practical and soft – why weren’t we thrilled?

Or how about the Christmas he bought us matching white baseball caps – thin as onion skin. Mine was emblazoned with the British flag and my sister’s said “Damn I’m Good.” It’s debatable which makes less sense for a child. Looking back, they still make me laugh and laugh.

My father wasn’t raised as a priority. Four sons and his parents fed themselves first if times were tight. Maybe we wore clothes from garage sales instead of from the Gap, but my dad never slowed from working for us until we were long past needing it. He put us through college and paid for summer camp and band lessons and I didn’t have the first damn idea of the stress those bills must have cost him. Still every year at Christmas – even as we adults promise over and over not to exchange gifts – he puts in hours at the mall, finding us each the perfect gift and wrapping it personally, all thumbs and lumpy corners. Wrapping as he has lived – getting the most important things right even if no one ever taught him how to do it all perfectly.

Here’s the thing Christmas Vacation taught me this year: My father did the absolute best he could for us - and Clark Griswold’s all-too-human fumbling maybe reassured him that he’d done well enough. I love the movie for both reasons.

And for one more: The heart of its protagonist.

I’ve always identified with Clark’s holiday giddiness despite the world’s increasing cynicism. There will be no city tree lot evergreen for the Griswolds: No! They will march into the snowy woods and uproot their own. A single train of rain gutter lining Christmas lights is unthinkable. It will be a twinkling Sistine chapel of a yard display or it will be nothing.

There is a risk to earnestness, isn’t there? There’s a risk to being the dreamy goof who won’t turn off the Christmas music, who sings poorly and proudly at church – who GOES to church!, who loves an old sweater with snowflakes woven in, who puts up a tree even if you’re the only one around to admire it, who hands out late gifts to those who may not do the same for you – late because you don’t want them to feel obligated to reciprocate, given because your heart is so bursting with gratitude and affection this time of year you can’t not spell it out through some tangible, nostalgic token.

The world is not a great admirer of such earnestness. And what I love about Clark is that he could give a damn. The mocking of his in-laws and scorn of his neighbors don’t thwart his enthusiasm for creating a reverent Christmas and that is a beautiful and rare sort of strength. You may argue that the analogy is a stretch, but I’ll tell you what: Clark is not on the snob side of cummings’ division.

He’s earnest and committed to the marrow of life, not the showy arrangements of the incidentals and accessories. As a coworker puts it, he’s the “last of the family men.” His Christmas bonus won’t be invested in sport cars or golfing trips – it’s already pre-spent to install a family pool. And when the check doesn’t arrive, it’s not himself he’s upset for; He’s devastated at the prospect of letting his family down.

Clark is the kind of man who gets it wrong sometimes with the very best intentions, who falls off roofs, gets stuck in the attic and causes city brownouts with poorly planned light displays. Who awkwardly, innocently flirts with voluptuous store clerks and nearly kills himself on greased snow sleds. But he is also the kind of man who loves his family unabashedly, primarily.

Halfway through the movie I find myself thinking maybe this is what life is all about. Not about the dashing men who say all the right things and charm your co-workers at parties and remain an intriguing arm’s length away. Maybe love is about a good (not perfect!) man who wears Santa hats and comes to bed faithfully every night, wanting to be there, and lets you call him Sparky. Who tears up at old home movies, who wants life to be better for his children. Who fights to defend the heart and adventure and fun in life and labors every day solely for the care of his family. Maybe a family man – like Clark, like my dad – is the very best sort of man.

Even more than the holiday classics, Christmas Vacation convinces me that a purposeful commitment to your family may be the noblest of pursuits.

And loyalty might be the purest definition of love that I know.

Erica U. is a writer living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.