I felt a little bad for picking on Clark Griswold earlier this week. He should have owned a vacation home in Lake Geneva, but he was obviously a middle class sort of guy, just trying to cash a big enough Christmas bonus check to pay for a pool. Maybe a Lake Geneva vacation home was still a few years out of his reach. My Christmas movie intake is on the rise, due primarily to a seven year old son with an insatiable desire for all things Christmas, so it should be no surprise to learn that Home Alone was can’t miss TV earlier this week. And the week prior, and the week before that. If Clark Griswold was a marginal Lake Geneva candidate, then Mr. McAllister takes the cake for Holiday themed fictional Chicagoans in dire need of a Lake Geneva vacation home.
Consider the case of poor Kevin McAllister. His family accidentally forgets him at their home on Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, and jet sets for a Christmas vacation in Paris. Since the film grossed over $450MM at the box office (and cost only $18MM to make), I’m sure you’re aware of the story of Home Alone. A pre-Neverland Macaulay Culkin played young Kevin McAllister, and the movie follows him as he protects his home from wise guy Joe Pesci and his partner in crime, Marv (best unknown as the adult voice over for The Wonder Years).
This film is filled with the sort of tactical errors that I imagine families who live in beautiful homes on the North Shore encounter as they plod through life without Lake Geneva vacation homes. Filling up their Holidays and weekends with trips to Paris, so frenetic in the planning that they forget one of their children at home. The guilt of knowing that their own selfish vacation choices undoubtedly scarred one of their children for life. Imagine a grown up Kevin. He down in the basement, his wife upstairs. Quiet moments pass, and Mrs. Kevin calls down to her husband to see what he’s up to. Kevin, agitated by the incessant nagging, hollers back “I’m tarring the steps like I always do on Christmas Eve!” Scarred for life, all because his parents had to be fancy pants and vacation in France instead of Lake Geneva.
What if Kevin’s parents had decided to purchase a vacation home just an hour and twenty minutes away in Lake Geneva? Imagine the trauma that the family could have escaped. Instead of rushing to a dirty airport, they could have simply loaded up the family car and pointed it north. Instead of Mrs. McAllister awakening mid-flight to the truth that she left her young son at home, she could have simply asked her husband to turn the car around to go home to pick up Kevin. If they had driven the mere 64 miles to their comfortable Lake Geneva vacation home before they realized they had left bratty Kevin in Winnetka, the fix would have been simple. No trading an old lady some earrings, $500, a fake Rolex, and two first class tickets for a return flight. No riding in a Uhaul with John Candy and his polka friends through the night. No volunteering your son to the emotional and physical torture of fighting off would be intruders. No free range tarantula that might not easily be found. Had Lake Geneva been their Christmas destination, they could have simply unloaded the family and presents, and Mr. McAllister could have driven home quickly to pick up Kevin and they would have been reunited with the family before Christmas Eve dinner.
Of course the common thread running through Home Alone and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation is our late friend and former Williams Bay homeowner, John Hughes. Perhaps Mr. Hughes wasn’t really just trying to write and direct humorous movies that would remain Christmas classics decades after they were first produced. He obviously enjoyed Holiday and coming of age movies, but perhaps he had a greater vision for his films. What if John’s movies were actually subliminally trying to convince Chicagoans that much trouble and lasting psychological trauma could be avoided if they’d just follow his lead and vacation in Lake Geneva? Instead of building a swimming pool, or flying to Paris, what about just driving up to a comfortable vacation home on the shores of Geneva Lake? Lord knows it certainly would have helped both the Griswolds and the McAllisters.