Read

There are a lot of practical filmmaking reasons The Griswold’s Christmas Vacation (1989) house needs to be so grand. It has to be big enough to accommodate a vast ensemble cast. It needs the physical stature to handle 25,000 Christmas lights. It has to have an attic big enough for Clark’s (Chevy Chase) screening of family films from 1959, and for him to fall through the ceiling. But being that the major pitfall of the story is that Clark might not have enough money to finance an in-ground pool—certainly a luxury expense for an already well-off family—makes it a bit challenging for everyday folk to sympathize with his plight.

As The Billfold says, “For a white dude in America with a hot wife and a huge house and kids who aren’t in rehab and a job that presumably pays at least six figures, Clark Griswold sure has a lot of problems come Christmastime.”

Despite his buffoonish behavior, Clark appears to have some form of intelligent, reasonably high-level research and development job at the company where he works. Having mentioned working on a non-nutritive cereal varnish that keeps cereal from going flimsy in milk, we understand that he is more than a common cubicle employee at this organization. He appears to do well financially—his house is enormous (arguably at least 3,000sqft), his wife doesn’t appear to have a job, and he has multiple kids who are well-kept. He also lives next door to two yuppies, Todd and Margo Chester (Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who clearly relish the finer things in life as defined by yuppie culture. Living next door to the Griswolds, their socioeconomic worlds can’t be too far segregated. Clark also lives in the same town as his boss, Mr. Shirley (Brian Doyle-Green), albeit on a different road. Clark refers to Shirley’s residence as a home located “with all the other rich people over on Melody Lane.” The casual use of “on Melody Lane” is evidence that even though Shirley’s home may be on a more expensive street, it is still in the same town.

In short, Clark complains about “rich” people like Shirley, but in the eyes of the typical American, Clark is rich. He has the amenities and luxuries most American families strive toward as an end goal.

Clark puts a $7,500 deposit down on an in-ground pool. We know because he says so, handing an advertisement to co-worker Bill (Sam McMurray) and earning the title of “the last true family man.” At the end of the film, when his would-be Christmas bonus arrives via courier, Clark announces that he “didn’t have enough money in his account to cover the check.” In real life, this would mean he is broke: his checkbook would indicate a negative balance and he would have no money for anything. Yet throughout the film, we see him go Christmas shopping, supply a huge Christmas dinner for a dozen family members, show no concern for the enormous electric bill his festival of lights would inevitably produce, and tell his cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) that he and wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) want to give Eddie’s kids “a nice Christmas this year” since Eddie can’t afford presents for his children. Is this all being paid for with credit cards?

Not being able to cover a $7,500 check would be a reality for most Americans. In July 2014, bank consulting firm Moebs Services released a report detailing that the average American carried $4,436 in their checking account by the end of 2013. Regular people don’t write checks for pools—they finance them. The median household income for an American family in 2014 was $53,657. In 1989, sad but true, it was nearly the same. But that’s household income. Clark is the only wage earner in the house. The current median American wage for a single earner is a little over $28,000. Even if that were the same figure in 1989, if Clark expects a Christmas bonus in excess of $7,500, that would nearly a quarter of the average person’s annual salary in a single check. Even if Clark was only expecting his bonus check to partly cover the cost of a down payment, it’s still a huge sum of money compared to the typical person’s expectations.

The way Clark complains about not getting a bonus while standing in front of impoverished Eddie and his family is crass. We are supposed to sympathize with Clark for being enrolled in a jelly of the month club when he expected dollars, but standing directly in front of him is a true welfare case who would be honored to have a real house a quarter the size of the Griswold’s—pool or not.

Of course, following an impassioned speech where Clark tells his boss people depend on their bonuses as part of their salary so they can buy things like pools, not only does Clark end up with his bonus, he gets one 20% bigger than the previous year. He also gets away with kidnapping, as his boss is so moved by this bourgeois need to install household luxuries that he deems himself the villain. This doesn’t boast a real commendable message: Upper class guy whines about money and ends up with more money to spend on luxuries. His deprived family members stay deprived. (Although Clark will have enough left to “fly them all over” to swim once the pool installed.)

John Hughes was an incredible screenwriter who had an amazing aptitude for dialogue and understanding characters. He also frequently wrote films about upper class types. Neal in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) had a cushy marketing job and a beautiful home in Chicago. The McCallisters in Home Alone (1990) are obviously doing just fine. The teens in Pretty in Pink (1986) had cars and came from wealth, and The Breakfast Club (1985) kids lived in a town where their high school library was the size of some entire schools.

Granted, in comparison to Shirley, Clark probably considers himself poor. We see Shirley’s house briefly before Eddie kidnaps him and the place is no shack. Financial relatability is a matter of perspective, and people always strive for more. Still, most Americans surely wish they were as poor as the Griswolds.

Fortunately, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is full of enough dumb humor to make it a revisitable Christmas classic despite the error of its attempts at sympathy. None of Clark’s complaining really detracts from what is a beloved and extremely funny film in all its other merits. It merely does a poor job of relating to realistic financial worries of a standard American family.