A National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Mystery May Have Been Solved On Reddit
National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation" is a seminal classic enjoyed by families all across the globe for over three decades. Patriarch Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) just wants his family's holidays to go off without a hitch, but the universe consistently has other plans for the Griswold family. Cousin Catherine (Miriam Flynn), her wild husband Eddie (Randy Quaid), and their family show up unannounced, the cat gets electrocuted, the turkey is ruined, a squirrel hides out in the too-big Christmas tree, the festive light display causes a citywide power outage, and the tree eventually catches fire. Everything that could go wrong on Christmas goes horrifically, laughably, wrong ... but at least Clark can look forward to his annual Christmas bonus to arrive. He spends the majority of the film looking toward this bonus as the last beacon of hope as he drowns in holiday hijinks.
Alas, when the bonus arrives, it's not what Clark had imagined at all. Instead of the financial boost he intended to use to build a pool in his backyard, his boss Frank Shirley (Brian Doyle-Murray) signed him up for the Jelly of the Month club, inspiring one of the best comedy monologues of all time. Now, I've never worked somewhere that has had holiday bonuses, nor did my parents, so the idea of randomly getting a check at the end of the year with enough money to install a pool is as unfathomable to me as claiming you've high-fived an alien. This is to say, I always knew it was a huge blow to Clark's plans to not have the bonus, but it's never registered to me how bad it was. Fortunately, Reddit user Atlhart did the research and finally figured out just how much Clark was anticipating he'd receive for his Christmas bonus, and determined just how severe a blow it was to receive the Jelly of the Month Club membership plan.
Clark Griswold was denied over $20,000
As Atlhart pointed out, Clark had mentioned wanting to put in a swimming pool and joked, "If there's enough left over I'm flying you all here" to try out the pool. In 1989, installing a fiberglass below-ground pool would set you back roughly $20,000. If he was anticipating the bonus covering not just the cost of the installation and materials but also enough to fly people out to Chicago to try it out, he was probably anticipating $24,000 as a bonus. This number relates to roughly 20-25 percent of the annual salary in the late 1980s for a chemical engineer — the job Clark has had for years. Althart explained:
"Clark had a direct interaction with the CEO of the company (a company making cereal in Chicago, so maybe Kellogg). BUT the CEO didn't care enough to remember Clark's name. So I'd put Clark at Senior Manager or Director level. I'd wager he was making $75k-$80k in 1989 (inflation-adjusted to $180k-$200k today), so his bonus was probably about 25 percent which is a reasonable and realistic bonus percent for a director at a corporate company like that. On a $80k salary, a 25 percent bonus would be $20k."
To counter, the current cost of the most popular Jelly of the Month club membership is $249.99, which was worth about $100 in 1989. Okay, yeah, I definitely see why Clark lost his mind. But now my question is why Ellen Griswold (Beverly D'Angelo) was okay with Clark blowing 20 grand on a pool that can only be used three months out of the year because they live in Chicago when they have two kids to put through college!
Then again, college in the 1990s cost less than that pool so who am I to judge how fictional characters spend their pretend money?