The legendary raconteur Jean Shepherd died 25 years ago this fall. His humorous stories were parables based on his fractured personal life and dismal view of men. I got to know Shepherd firsthand while teaching storytelling with him. He loved telling tales about troublesome male obsessions, sprinkled with glimmers of unmerited grace. His most popular work, the movie “A Christmas Story,” is viewed annually by tens of millions Americans on cable TV alone. In Shepherd’s mind, however, the film was more of a personal parable than a holiday story. Shepherd believed that men get obsessed with “things,” such as rifles, cars, decoder rings and even leg lamps. Foremost is men’s desire for women. Everything else that men chase is a secondary projection of their desire for the ideal woman. According to Shepherd, this male obsession is genetic, emanating from primordial cravings. He wanted his movies to begin with shots of puffing factory smokestacks, Freudian symbols of ancient male desires. In “A Christmas Story,” the Old Man wins a “major award” — a leg lamp — in a newspaper contest. The lamp has become the movie’s most famous visual icon. Shepherd told me that the leg lamp was the Old Man’s “trophy wife.” The Old Man hopes to turn on the neighborhood with his “major award” — similar to parading his sexy babe before unhappy clodhoppers stuck in claustrophobic marriages with second-rate women. When I pressed him on the sexual aspect of his worldview, he told me about his absent father. Around the time that Shepherd graduated from high school, his rarely present dad packed up a suitcase and left for good in a convertible with his blonde secretary. Shepherd’s father said to him, “Kid, you’ll understand when you get older.” Shepherd said he never saw his father again. The character of the Old Man in Shepherd’s many stories rarely addresses his sons by name. Shepherd believed that most men don’t really want kids, anyway. Families tie them down. Men are always hunting for fresh “trophies.” Shepherd was married four times. His second marriage produced two children. Yet the successful Shepherd became the very kind of absent father that he had experienced growing up in Hammond. In my view, Shepherd never came to terms psychologically with being abandoned by his father. Sadly, he never reconciled with his estranged children. Like more than a few entertainers, Shepherd suffered from a grand ego and low self-esteem. He died a year after his last wife passed away, lonely and cynical, but also amazed at the joy he had given to radio listeners, viewers, live audiences and readers. His fans adored him, but they had no idea how essential their idolization was for their star’s meager happiness. In his career as well as his fourth marriage, Shepherd found unexpected joy. He was, like Ralphie in the movie, surprised that he received such a special gift. The Old Man is the one major character in the movie whom Ralphie never asks for the Red Ryder BB rifle. Maybe Ralphie believes that his case is hopeless, especially after being turned down by mom, his teacher and even Santa — who boots Ralphie down the slide at Higbee’s department store. But the Old Man comes through, astounding Ralphie and Mom. At the end of the movie, Mom and the Old Man reconcile. They sit together on the sofa, looking at the gently falling snow through the same window that had been marred by the trophy-wife lamp. The Old Man’s obsession has been buried in the backyard with the tawdry lamp that Mom intentionally shattered. Watching the scene as Shepherd’s former friend and colleague, however, I know that new male obsessions will emerge in subsequent tales. Mom, as temporary hero, will have to break future male fixations. The film ends with “Silent Night” — peace on earth. It becomes a 90-minute parable of unexpected grace in a world eternally fractured by male obsessions. Quentin Schultze, Ph.D, is an emeritus professor at Calvin University in Michigan and author of “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out! Life Lessons from the Movie ‘A Christmas Story.’” Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].