
As a Jewish kid growing up in an interfaith household, I did celebrate Christmas throughout much of my childhood. But we had a small family & not much to do on the holiday itself, after we'd opened gifts. To be honest, after that, Christmas got kinda boring - so I spent many a Christmas watching A Christmas Story on repeat as it played alllll day long on TNT.
In 1988, TNT started playing 24 hours' worth of A Christmas Story - a whopping 12 showings. It has recently come to my attention that many of my fellow Jews are unaware of the movie, which, to be honest, I find baffling because what else did we have to do on Christmas?! I, for one, entered adulthood knowing much of the film by heart.
But it wasn't until I moved to Cleveland that I learned about the film's local ties. During the holiday season in 2015, I started seeing leg lamps allll over the city. I even did a roundup of them here on the blog!