MBS and I continue to make the doughnuts on the Family Pictures Podcast, episode 5 discussing the 1983 classic A Christmas Story is in the can. I’m really proud we’ve been able to keep the momentum up these last couple of months, and while we’ll be taking a break for a couple of weeks over the holidays, we’ll be back in early January with one of my favorite criminal family films: At Close Range (1986).
A 1981 ad for the Atari VCS (soon to be known as the Atari 2600)
Now on to my Atari 2600 Christmas story, which I also narrate in the podcast episode. A Christmas Story centers around nine year old Ralphie’s intense longing for the Red Ryder BB Gun, which maps almost one-to-one with my own obsession with the Atari 2600 as a ten year old in 1981. There was nothing more in the world that I wanted for Christmas than an Atari Video Computer System,* I was obsessed. I kept the Atari Catalog under my pillow for nighttime reading; its pages filled with wizards, aliens, astronauts, asteroids, Pelé, and end-of-the-world nuclear annihilation….I was all in!
Cover of the Atari Video Computer System Catalog from 1981
My mom was given to splurge at Christmas (maybe too much so from an accounting perspective), so I had a good idea this was going to happen. In fact, with seven kids to shop for all by herself, she would get quickly overwhelmed and the walk-in closet in her room became a dumping ground of assorted bags filled with random presents. Being a not very patient child, I would sneak into her closet and rummage through the booty to find my loot. Lo and behold I found not only the Atari VCS, but also the three hottest cartridges of 1981: Asteroids, Missile Command, and the old gold Space Invaders. But rather than being content with knowing, I had to take it a step further and bring the presents to my friend’s house, unbox them, set the system up, and play the Atari for a full week before packing it all back up and returning it to the closet. What a little shit I was.
Description of Space Invaders from 1981 Atari VCS Catalog
I did my best to act surprised come Christmas morning, but my mom knew what I’d done. She made a point of not ruining the moment, but would later confront me with the last words you ever want to hear from the person you admire the most in this world: “I’m not upset, just deeply disappointed.” That Christmas story still haunts me, and my siblings love to remind me (and my kids) of my boyhood transgressions when we share our holiday memories. Christmas was a wonder-filled time for me as a kid, and for that I’m lucky and still owe a great debt to my mom. Some of my most treasured memories of her are wrapped up in the mania of the holidays, and even then I had an inkling how big a psychic toll Christmas took on a single-mom with 7 kids. A Christmas Story captures not only the fantasy and longing of the holiday for a young child, but also a sense of how dysfunctional insanity and joyful excitement can co-exist in a moment that will one day become one of the many stories we cherish and share.
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*Still the greatest present I have ever received.
