“National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” was released in 1989, arriving in U.S. theaters on December 1 of that year. It is the third film in the Vacation series centered on Clark Griswold and his family.
The movie was directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik and written and produced by John Hughes. Its story follows Clark’s increasingly chaotic attempt to create a perfect old-fashioned Christmas, including an enormous tree, extravagant decorations, difficult relatives, and an expected year-end bonus.
The film was inspired by Hughes’s short story “Christmas ’59,” published in National Lampoon. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo returned as Clark and Ellen Griswold, while Randy Quaid became especially memorable as the eccentric cousin Eddie.
Although the movie received mixed reviews when it first appeared, it became a recurring holiday favorite. Its release year is sometimes confused with the year of the original “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” which came out in 1983, or with “Christmas Vacation 2,” a later television sequel released in 2003.