My seventh-grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Blinsinger, was largely unremarkable. He was mostly humorless, and I had little to no interest in Social Studies (where was the Anti-Social Studies class my constitution so badly needed?) He wasn’t mean, and he wasn’t a bad teacher, he was just a typical middle-aged man teaching kids who didn’t want to be there. It must be hard to do that day in and day out.
When the day before Christmas vacation rolled around, he was the last person I expected to go easy on us, much less express any sentiment or feeling about the season. When he wheeled in the television and VCR cart, setting it up in the front of the room I fully expected some lesson in history to play; instead, it was as much of ‘A Christmas Story’ as would fit into our class period. Even after it began, I thought it was some joke, that he would dole out a pop quiz after a few minutes of the movie. That didn’t happen, and we watched about half of the story – my first experience with ‘A Christmas Story’. As the bell rang and we got up to leave, he gave a rare smile, and I said thank you as I filed out.
That’s a long introduction to my introduction to ‘A Christmas Story’, which plays a part in this Dazzler of the Day as it marks the movie for which Peter Billingsley is perhaps best known. A couple of years ago they did a sequel, ‘A Christmas Story Christmas’, which stands up surprisingly well as sequels go, echoing the original in all the right ways, and expanding upon its warm messages. Billingsley reprises his role, this time as a grown up Ralphie, and the all-wise-and-all-knowing narrator. It works crazy well, and this Dazzler crowning is as much for the joy he inspired as a young kid, and again as an adult.
