The plot of Christmas Vacation is that Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase) decides that this year his family is going to have ‘the most fun-filled old-fashioned family Christmas ever’. He becomes obsessed with organising the perfect celebration, which in his case involves 25,000 Christmas lights, a tree too large for his house and invitations to an utterly dysfunctional extended family.
Inevitably, of course, it all goes terribly wrong and there’s all sorts of fun to be had with frosty neighbours, hillbilly relatives, an invasive squirrel and a cat that spectacularly exceeds its quota of nine lives.
Most of the humour comes from the gulf between Griswold’s well-intentioned but naive dream to create the perfect Christmas festivities and the chaotic mess that reality delivers.
And here is the lesson: the danger that the trappings of Christmas – the gifts, meals, decorations and traditions – soon acquire a life of their own and hijack the season. The wrapping paper takes over from the present.
The result is, as Griswold finds out, that you soon find yourself caught up in something you can’t control: a monstrous, ever-growing, unstoppable snowball of increasing cost and complexity that crushes everything and everyone in its path. And while we may avoid something of the spectacular calamities in Christmas Vacation, we all know of smaller versions.
Perhaps there is a lesson for us in the unpolished and raw setting of the birth of Christ. Perhaps God is saying that at Christmas less really is more.
So this Christmas don’t be misled into trying to create the perfect Christmas; it won’t work and it isn’t necessary.
Create a warm, festive home and be kind and loving to your family and friends. God has put a billion trillion stars up there for Jesus, and that’s heart-warming for me.
