I had this discussion with my mother after she read somewhere that it was set during the depression and was rather incredulous. I always took it to be taking place in the late 40s or at latest the early 50s. I can’t imagine it happening before the end of WW2.
But there was no TV! No tv set in their house or in a store window, and that happened at the end of WWII. Didn’t it?
I like the idea of a mashup of different memories from different years! That explains the contradictions very well.
I think it was 1939 or 1940, before WWII. If it did take place during the war years, there would just HAVE to be some mention of wartime doings. Blackouts. Victory gardens. Japs, Nazis. The brave neighborhood kid who signed up and went off to war and not come back. Women with those ugly rolled up hairdos, working at a defense plant. Scrap drives. Propaganda posters in public places. No movie taking place during the war years can NOT feature some mention of the war!
We were discussing this Christmas Eve while it was playing and while we were debating and searching the Internet, the scene where he decodes the message came up and we noticed the decoder read 1940 on it. Paused it on the DVR to make sure.
Instead of Sheriff Ralphie shooting at Black Bart it would be…
I just read a AAA magazine in a waiting room about Christmas Classics and they quoted 1941… how they arrived at that I don’t know.
No, wait… sorry about that, they simply dated it to “set in the 1940’s”
More than that, the adult Jean, er, Ralphie is telling a story that he wants his listeners to find entertaining. That probably even *requires *some rearrangement and outright invention.
One of my favorite reference points is when the old man is reading the paper and says “The sox traded bullfrog.”
According to IMdb trivia: This is a reference to a White Sox pitcher Bill Dietrich who was released on September 18, 1946.
This seems to be the biggest problem my mother has with the movie. I never noticed her hair before, as I view her as a non-essential character. But thanks to mom, Ralphie’s mom’s hair annoys me every time she’s on the screen.
Thanks, mom. :dubious:
As for the license plate having a 40 on it, I think if you want to pin it to a year, this has to be used. And depending on what state you lived in, that 40 could mean the year the plate expires, which means the movie was shot for 1939 (most states required annual registration). In other states, the 40 could indicate that the plate was good for 1940.
So, 1939 or 1940 is my official guess.