Summary
The film begins with an older, adult Ralphie describing his life as a young boy from Hohman, Indiana, a town preparing to celebrate Christmas.
He and his friends stare at a shop window with toy trains and planes before Ralphie sees "the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts" – the Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle. Ralphie has been trying to subtly convince his parents to purchase the rifle for him for Christmas, because he knows they will say no if he asks them directly.
When Ralphie's mom asks him what he wants for Christmas, he accidentally blurts out exactly what he wants. His mother responds, "You'll shoot your eye out."
Ralphie fantasizes that he saves his family from burglars by using his BB gun and recommits to implanting the idea in his parents' minds. Meanwhile, Ralphie's father fights with their furnace, which continues to give the family trouble.
Ralphie and his little brother Randy walk to school, but Randy falls down and needs help getting up because his snowsuit is so puffy.
At school, Ralphie's friend challenges his other friend, Flick, to lick a metal telephone pole. When he does, his tongue gets stuck to the pole and he starts crying. The fire department has to come to the school to separate Flick from the pole.
Back in class, the teacher assigns everyone the task of writing about what they want for Christmas.
Analysis
The beginning of the film establishes its central characters, conflict, and major stakes. The film introduces viewers to Ralphie, the main character, through the the contrast between his adult and younger self. While the events of the film follow nine-year-old Ralphie and his friends and family during Christmastime, these events are narrated by Ralphie as an adult.
This narration contributes to the film's comedy, as the adult Ralphie indulges in the thought process of his younger self by describing his emotions in dramatic and exaggerated terms. The narrator of the film often uses elevated vocabulary and rich descriptions to communicate what his younger self is thinking, specifically when it comes to the Red Ryder BB gun, "the Holy Grail" of Christmas gifts. That these elaborate and thoughtful monologues appear over the image of the sweet, round-faced Ralphie emphasizes the film's attempt to portray a child's passion for Christmas with the same severity as adults approach their own passions and conflicts.
Indeed, this first section of the film also establishes the central and minor conflicts around which the rest of the film turns. This first and main conflict of the film is that Ralphie wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas but knows his parents would not approve of it (a sentiment that his mother expresses directly when she utters the now famous refrain of the film, "you'll shoot your eye out").
A subplot also emerges among Ralphie's group of friends as they find ways to entertain themselves while away from their parents at school.
A third subplot involves Ralphie's parents, his father's frustration with the family's economic status, and his mother's plight as she balances the many tasks of a stay-at-home mom.
In short, the beginning of the film introduces viewers to what would have been, at the time of its release, a typical middle-class, Midwestern American family. All of the conflicts that the characters find themselves part of are rather innocuous and to some degree laughable, and part of the film's status as a "classic" Christmas movie stems from that fact that it attempts to portray the small stresses of each family member – mother, father, and children – around the chaotic holiday season.
