I really don't *hate* this movie...I just don't get it. And, generationally, I should be pretty close to the mark that Shepherd was aiming for...the movie takes place in the late ‘40s and I was born in 1953...so, even though it would have been 1962 before I was Ralphie's age, I still grew up through most of the Fifties.

The problem for me is that I also grew up in Southern California (putting me in the perfect place and era to be immersed in the surfing and hot rod scenes). A Christmas Story reflects, to me, an "East Coast" world. Yes, I know it's set in Indiana...but for a SoCal kid, anything east of the Rockies represented a foreign country. While we had access to mountains and snow, it was not part of the winters we had. Ralphie and the kids his age just don't remind me that much of anyone I knew when I was in school. Neither do the parents. Absolutely, neither do the parents. Everyone always says how "real" these characters are. Not by me. They're as overblown and caricatured as those in any early sitcom.

Hulman, Indiana portrays -- in my eyes, at least -- a working class, "lunch bucket" kind of town. And that's fine. But that's nothing at all like what I experienced in my town, at my school, or with my parents and their friends.

In later years, I married into a family from Flint, Michigan and, in getting to know them, their history and their (sadly collapsing) community, I can see how my wife and her siblings all love this movie (she's watching it right now)...but, for me, I can't even get into the nostalgia angle because it's nothing I ever lived.