It’s that time of year.  The seasonal decorations that began springing up on the heels of the last
trick-or-treaters are now in full bloom.  Our waistlines have been challenged by an unremitting barrage of turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie; we’ve managed to avoid the Black Friday stampedes; and by the time you read this, the last candle will have flickered out on the Hanukkah menorah.  (Yes, it’s early this year.)  But among the many holiday traditions still on the horizon, one stands head and shoulders above all others.  It’s one that—for an entire day—enthralls and delights people of all creeds and religious persuasions.  You don’t need wealth or privilege to partake of this ritual.  All you need is a television and basic cable.

Of course, the event I refer to is TBS’s annual broadcast—for 24 hours straight beginning Christmas Eve—of the movie classic A Christmas Story.  A Christmas Story is a 1983 comedy film based on the short stories and anecdotes of author and raconteur Jean Shepherd, including material from his books In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories.  In the ’60s and ’70s, Shepherd held court each night on WOR radio in New York, spinning tales of his boyhood exploits growing up in the industrial town of Hammond, Indiana.  A born storyteller, Shepherd would delight his audience with epic Depression-era sagas, such as the time his long-suffering dad proudly displayed a sweepstakes prize in the living room window, to the chagrin of his wife and the entire neighborhood.  The prize, as Shepherd-philes well know, was a lamp in the shape of a woman’s fishnet-stockinged leg.  That, and many other stories, were woven together to create the plot for A Christmas Story.

Of course, the movie’s central theme revolves around the holiday of the title.  Specifically, it concerns the yearning of young Ralphie—Shepherd’s boyhood alter ego—for a Red Ryder® BB gun for Christmas.  Everyone he mentions this to, from his mother to the sinister department store Santa who kicks him down a slide with his big black boot, reacts with the same retort:  “You’ll shoot your eye out.”  In the end, Ralphie’s holiday dream comes true, but the grownups’ admonition nearly does too.  With the first shot,  the recoil from the Red Ryder shatters Ralphie’s oversized horn-rim glasses, leaving him chastened and helpless as the bumptious neighbor’s mangy dog gobbles up the family’s holiday turkey.

What does any of this saga have to do with trademarks?  Well, the film’s central prop—the Red Ryder®—was and is a real product.  According to Wikipedia, the Red Ryder® BB gun is made by Daisy Outdoor Products.  Introduced in 1938, it resembles the Winchester rifle of Western movies.  It was named after the comic book character Red Ryder, and is still in production today, despite the fact that the comic strip was cancelled in 1963.  It is arguably the most famous BB gun in American history.  So yet again, a trademark takes center stage on the Silver Screen.

As for Jean Shepherd, although he died in 1999, his legacy lives on, and not just on TBS on December 24th and 25th.  Podcasts of his radio show can now be downloaded from iTunes, and contain a treasure trove of wry social and political humor from the early ’70s that still retains its vitality.  Shepherd’s take on the social alienation fostered by the then-nascent phenomenon of computer dating, for example, remains as biting and insightful in our iPad age as it did when the matchmaking was done by mainframes and punch cards.  His live concert performances involved circuitous, hysterical monologues that somehow, hours later, ended up right back where Shep had started.  He was the inspiration for an entire generation of performers, including acclaimed monologist Spalding Gray, and most famously, Jerry Seinfeld.  And in less than a month, we can all experience the genius of Jean—for 24 hours straight.  Flick lives!