A Christmas Story Q&A 

By Laura Longley

Surely by now you’ve heard the good news: The boy in the bunny suit is back.

Peter Billingsley, the original Ralphie Parker of A Christmas Story, is 39 years older with a spouse, two kids, and a mother he hasn’t seen in quite a while. A Christmas Story Christmas brings much of the first film back to life and up to date.  Even the critics on Rotten Tomatoes have given it a favorable 76 percent. It scored higher with audiences: 81 percent.

The new film was produced by Billingsley and producer/actor Vince Vaughn, with many of the first film’s cast reappearing in their original roles.

But it’s fair to say that as delightful as the new work may be, the 1983 film most likely will be the one that lives on in our collective memory.

However, if your memory has dimmed a bit, let us offer you A Christmas Story Quiz. The answers are below. No fair checking them out first.

Quiz questions:

1. What did Ralphie want more than anything for Christmas?
2. What warning did his Mother and Santa give him? 
3. Who hid it behind the Christmas tree?
4. What was the radio in the Parker home that aired Little Orphan Annie?
5. What was the message of the Secret Decoder Ring?
6. What was Mother’s punishment when a certain “bad” word came out of Ralphie’s mouth?
7.   Who was the bully with yellow eyes?
8. Who took the “triple -dog-dare” and got his tongue stuck on a frozen pole?
9. Who was Ralphie’s other buddy?
10. How old is Ralphie in the film?
11. How old was the actor Peter Billingsley in the original film?
12. What was the “Italian” Fra-Gee-Lay treasure that-The Old Man won?
13. Who gave Ralphie the Bunny suit?
14. What would only A Christmas Story buff know about the bunny suit?
15. What did Ralphie’s younger brother, Randy, refuse to eat until Mother challenged him to be a “little piggy”?
16. How did Randy eat them?
17. What neighbors owned the hounds that devoured the Parkers’ holiday turkey?
18. According to Ralphie, how many hounds did the neighbors own?
19. Where did the Parkers go for Christmas dinner?
20. What was still on the duck?
21. What made the duck’s head unforgettable?
22. Who was the narrator?

Jean Shepherd was once a nightly fixture on New York’s WOR. It was back in the days when radio talk didn’t shock. On the air, he would tell tales of his Indiana boyhood, which he eventually refined enough to write down.

A master monologist and writer, he spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant—and utterly hilarious—works of comic art. 

—From Amazon.com’s collection of editorial reviews and profiles

If you’re looking for a gift for a friend with a wry, sardonically irreverent sense of humor, put Jean Shepherd’s books on your list:

In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, the foundation for A Christmas Story, represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.

Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories collects the stories that first appeared in magazines in the 1960s and ‘70s. It features the memorable disaster that was Shepherd’s (and everyone else’s) junior prom. 

Also: A Fistful of Fig Newtons, The Ferrari in the Bedroom, Shepherd’s Pie, Pomp and Circumstance, The Phantom of the Open Hearth, and more. 

Answers

1. If you don’t know this one, you’ve never watched A Christmas Story. Ralphie prayed, dreamed, and schemed for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. 
2. “You’ll shoot your eye out!”
3. The Old Man. 
4. A1940 Canadian Westinghouse model 780-X
5. “BESURETODRINKYOUR OVALTINE.” Ralphie: “A crummy commercial!”
6. A mouthful of Lifebuoy soap. 
7. Scut Farkus
8. Ralphie’s friend Flick
9. Schwartz
10. Age 9
11. Age 12
12. The Leg Lamp.
13. Aunt Clara
14. The feet are sewn on backwards, the left foot on the right leg and the right foot on the left leg.
15. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
16. He put his face in the potatoes, then licked the plate clean.
17. The Bumpuses.
18. 785
19. Chop Suey Palace where the staff serenaded them with “Deck the Halls” and “Jingle Bells,” then served them duck.
20. It’s head. 
21. It was “smiling.”
22. The author and radio legend Jean Shepherd.