The tradition continues! Today we take on the yuletide cinema classic from 1991, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” It’s a film set in Chicagoland over the course of about two weeks in December.
At previous Christmas times we vivisected the Christmas Eve bowl game being played by USC and Notre Dame in “Die Hard.” and looked at how the movie’s “Christmas movie” classification chops. At Thanksgiving we covered a lot of, but of course not all, the transportation, commuter and geographical gaffes in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”
Rusty Griswold wears an #illini sweater in the "can't see the panty line, can you Russ?" scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
Right up there with Joel Goodson declaring the University of Illinois his safety school in Risky Business among U of I movie history moments pic.twitter.com/PxbySEEyoI
— Paul M. Banks (@PaulMBanks) December 16, 2019
For Clark W. Griswold, one of the most endearing Christmas movie characters ever, his work week begins on Dec. 14, according to the Advent calendar shown in the film. Thus, it must be a Monday, and therefore the Saturday in which the opening scene, the far-fetched and cataclysmic Christmas tree obtaining sojourn, occurs on December 12.
The movie culminates in the later stages of Christmas Eve, so it spans a time period of 12 days.
Vast stretches of the movie are basically cartoonish, so there are plot holes aplenty to point out.
Some are so silly, we’ll just skip them for now.
We won’t even get into how the parents age naturally throughout this franchise while the kids go backwards and then forwards and then I guess sideways or whatever, or back again with their aging process throughout the series.
4) Clark tells Russ “I’ve always wanted to do this”, implying he hasn’t decorated his house before. Yet he already possesses 25000 imported Italian twinkle lights.
5) Clark is trapped in the attic & falls through the ceiling onto Russ’s bed. Why does he stay in the attic?— Steve Anderson (@cubsphan76) December 24, 2018
We have a ton of strange and non-sensical gaffes and errors already to cover, so here’s five right off the bat, in the tweet above.
It’s also worth noting that no one on Earth would make the lane change, underneath the truck that Griswold makes in the opening scene of Christmas Vacation. That’s because you would easily see a truck that large with your peripheral vision, even if you were looking ahead the whole time.
Also, a gigantic vehicle like that, moving with such velocity, is something you would also hear coming.
Also, Ellen Griswold never seems to get too angry with her husband, despite all the ridiculously bone-headed things that he consistently does, and this might be most far-fetched thing of all. He does at least 20 things, in every vacation movie that would cause any wife to flip out.
Moving on, it’s really coincidental how both sets of grandparents, traveling from different parts of the country, end up at the suburban house at the exact same time.
Additionally, we’ll just skip past the rocket sled scene because there are just too many suspensions of reality to go through in that one.
Again that scene is basically a cartoon, so we’ll treat it as such. Now here are four more gaffes, bringing us up to nine already.
How did Eddie’s “gas money give out in Gurnee” when they’re from Kansas? Did they decide to drive up to North Dakota and cut west on I-80?
— Steve Anderson (@cubsphan76) December 24, 2018
And what happens to Clark’s sleeve that he mistakenly staples to the roof facade? We don’t see him retrieve it later, and also don’t see it on the side of the house again after that scene.
The mysteriously disappearing sleeve is an interesting one.
In terms of the attic scene, since he was able to crash through the floor so easily into an upstairs bedroom, why doesn’t Clark intentionally clear more space and then escape?
Also, enough space has arguably already been cleared so that he could conceivably make himself free. Or, at the very least, he could easily clear more space in the attic floor/bedroom ceiling so that he could squeeze through.
After all, he’s already going to need to that fixed, so why not just carve out a bigger hole and free himself? He was, clearly, trying to desperately get out of the attic.
After all, he was planning on going to lunch and shopping with his wife and all the grandparents. Yet he continues to stay in the attic, where he is noticeably extremely uncomfortable and freeze instead of making a real attempt to escape and then join them.
For some reason, this specific Christmas Vacation plot hole bothers me the most! I don’t why, maybe because it’s so simply debunked.
This scene also includes the most honest line in the entire film, as Ellen Griswold’s father stating: “Clark has a car- he can meet us up later, I have to eat, so I can take my back pill.”
If there are any septuagenarians or octogenarians in your life, then you can easily relate.
I can relate, and I’m only a Xiennial.
During the house lighting scene, how come the neighbors, Todd and Margo, don’t know their way around their own house better?
Even with the lights coming on and off, they can’t feel their way around their own home to figure out where they are?
They can’t help but trip and fall every single time the lights come on and off?
(There is this plot hole too:)
My number only plot hole comes with the lighting of the house. When the lights first come on, Clark’s on the side of the house, in the dark no less checking the plugs. How can he not see the house is lit up like Ellen does. Also, why would she leave before he comes back pic.twitter.com/8nMTu0k9Rn
— drunkharrycaray (@drunkharrycarey) December 19, 2022
Clark narrates “the shitter’s full” scene by stating that Cousin Eddie “oughta know it’s illegal (to empty the liquid waste into the sewer), it’s a storm drain; I pity anyone who lights a match within ten yards of it.”
The line is a classic example of the Chekov’s gun principle in story-telling, but Eddie already has a lit cigar (to accompany his morning Meister Brau) in his mouth at the time he’s doing the waste release.
So did he light it before he started emptying the “contraption?” It doesn’t quite add up here.
Also, how come every single person in the Christmas Vacation house is deathly afraid of squirrels as if this cute little animal is on par with a man-eating lion? There are people who literally keep squirrels as pets.
It’s so strange…until you see the squirrel leap straight for Margo’s neck as she comes to the door. Uhm, yeah, squirrels don’t do that in real life, ever. They’re actually afraid of people.
But in the Christmas Vacation universe, they have these imaginary predatory superpowers. Is that why everyone is deathly afraid of the common, everyday rodent (which the dog in the house would have found almost immediately, and started chasing)
It’s worth noting though that “you couldn’t hear a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerine plant” is one of the most underrated movie lines of all time!
It’s also worth noting that the comment about smacking a squirrel over the head with a hammer isn’t funny; it’s sociopathic. The electrocuted cat isn’t funny here. Neither is the dog tied to the rear station wagon bumper in the first movie.
Don’t why they do these disgusting, deplorable animal cruelty “jokes” in these movies. NOT funny!
Moving on to something that is realistic though- the massive and overly aggressive police and SWAT team response. Because they’re coming to aid a very rich white man. That’s true to life!
If the abductee was middle class or below, and non-white, there’s no way in hell the cops would move that fast and strike that hard in real life.
That all said, there’s obviously plenty more Christmas Vacation gaffes, errors and plot holes that we haven’t even covered, but surpassing 1,300 words on this already, I think we’ve spent enough time on this article.
Besides, the fact that we even did this exercise is a testament to how many times we’ve seen Christmas Vacation, and thus, how much of a Christmas classic we regard the film to be.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.