December 12
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
With this selection of National Lampoon Christmas’s Vacation, I am definitely revealing my interest in Christmas movies best befitting a teen-age boy. Having three sons, I guess it comes with the territory. Can anything redeeming be found in this film?
First, it is a film about family relationships, as bizarre as they may be. We all have a few relatives who lean to the weird side, although not as many as Clark Griswold does (Chevy Chase). Weird or not, when Clark determines to help Cousin Eddie with gifts for his kids, he understands: “This isn’t charity. It’s family.” Or, using the word as the King James Version of the Bible does, “this is charity [love]. It’s family.
These months of pandemic have forced many difficult decisions about family, as we’ve either decided to fully isolate from family members who don’t live in our home, or, as we did after the first few months of separation, formed a “pod” of family so as to provide child care and other needed support. Just as a young family in Bethlehem had to find their way, so too are we each finding our way together.
Here’s the other quote that caught my attention. Ruby Sue, Cousin Eddie’s young daughter, says of the Griswold house: “I love it here. You don’t got to put on your coat to go to the bathroom, and your house is always parked in the same place.” Like Ruby Sue, there are children whose only home is an aging RV, or a tent in a refugee camp. The inequality of resources in our world is real, and children pay a life-altering price. Here we come to the word charity again, as we ask, what might we do to change the world of at least one child? At least in response to that question, Clark Griswold’s heart is in the right place.
Then Josephgot up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt…
Matthew 2:14
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