All nine-year-old Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. But his request for the toy is met with the same warning from his mom, his teacher and Santa: “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Narrated by humorist Jean Shepherd (and based on his novel In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash), A Christmas Story also features the world’s worst double-dog dare, a most memorable lamp, and perhaps the greatest parental performance in cinema history courtesy of Darren McGavin as Ralphie’s “Old Man.”