Goofs for
Christmas Vacation (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Number of people in the truck in the chase scene.
  
  
• Continuity: The police cars speeding to the house were all Ford. Later, when scenes are shown with police cars parked in the background, they are all Chrysler.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In any of the varying outdoor scenes, the temperature is obviously supposed to be cold (judging by the snow and ice, the characters' comments, their clothing, etc.) as it normally would be in Chicago in winter. Yet the steam from their breath is never visible as it would be at such a temperature.
  
  

• Continuity: Just before the sledding scene, the hill in front of the family is very rough, with large mounds of snow, but when Clark does down the hill, it has become very smooth.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Just before Clark takes off down the hill in the sledding scene, there is a shot looking down the hill where you can clearly see the wires/cord in the snow that are used to make it look like the snow flies in the air as the sled races down the hill.
  
  
• Continuity: The door knocker and wreath are intact after being pulled off by the delivery man.
  
  
• Continuity: Clark staples the wrong part of his shirt to the roof.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A tow rope is visible pulling Clark's sled.
  
  
• Continuity: Two different model years of Ford Taurus wagon are used in the film for the same vehicle. This can be differentiated by examining the interior door trim panels, specifically the door lock, in different scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clark is putting up the Christmas lights, snow covered evergreen trees are visible. When the ladder falls backwards, trees (birch?) are clearly shown with no snow & full green leaves, which they would have lost well before December.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark is putting up the lights outside, the top section of the ladder gives way and slides to the ground. However, since the lower half of the ladder isn't leaning against anything, there is no way that the ladder could slide this way without falling forward into the house.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark is looking into the dining room watching his family argue, the chandelier is gone; in the very next shot it is back.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Eddie leaves Frank's mansion, the "snow" in the driveway wiggles.
  
  
• Continuity: The square block on the railing at the top of the stairs that Clark cuts off with a chainsaw reappears when the guests run upstairs to escape the squirrel.
  
  
• Continuity: From the interior of the house, the attic ladder is shown as a slide-down, but from the attic, it has a fold-out design.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark is polishing his sled, the bottom is smooth, but when it is going through the forest there are fins on the bottom.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark and family are hiding in the foyer from the squirrel, his Aunt's arms alternately around/not around Rusty between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ellen goes out to see Clark while he is trying to get the outside lights to work, her sweater jumps around on her shoulders between shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Clark's sled is about to crash into the wood hut, the shadow of the camera is visible.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Lifting wires are visible when Uncle Lewis goes into the air, when the sewer blows up at the end of the movie, after he lights the cigar launching Santa and his sleigh into the air.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Clark first turns on the Christmas lights, the shot from the power company has the word "Auxiliary" spelled incorrectly.
  
  
• Continuity: The moon is full prior to December 18th and the moon is still full on the 24th
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the dog chases the squirrel through the house, one shot has the squirrel disappear suddenly, revealing the jump cut between the shot of the squirrel and the shot of the dog.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Clark's encounter with Mary, the underwear salesgirl, a shot of the street and house is shown, and a tree can be seen in the front yard, with the fake-snow covered leaves blowing in the wind.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Ellen cuts a head of cabbage in half after her mother asks her if she's smoking again, the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board is heard before the knife touches the cabbage.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark is at the counter flirting with the girl, the looseness of his tie changes between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark slides down the roof of the house, he grabs on to the rain gutter which rips off, but in the next shot of him crawling along the gutter, it is merely bent down.
  
  
• Continuity: The area rug at the base of the stairs moves between shots when the family runs up the stairs during the squirrel chase.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark is putting up the Christmas lights on the roof, he tells Rusty to put down the plastic reindeer and to help him. When Rusty drops the reindeer, you can clearly see at least one of their legs break off. Later, when Clark can't get the lights to start, all the legs of every reindeer are intact.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Ellen and Clark are outside alone trying to light the Santa, a "wet-barrel" fire hydrant that cannot possibly be used in Chicago, IL due to freezing is visible. This type of fire hydrant is found in Southern California where there is no chance of freezing.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Russ goes to turn the breakers back on, they are already switched fully off. When breakers truly trip they only trip halfway off, forcing you to switch them to the full off position, then on.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The Christmas tree trip shows small mountains in the background and log-hauling trucks on the highway, neither of which accurately represent an Illinois landscape.
  
  
• Continuity: While the family is standing in the doorway after Clark gets the Christmas lights working, you can clearly see that this house is different from the house used for the inside shots. The inside shots show that the wooden stairs are directly in front of the doorway, however when shown in this scene the stairs are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: When we see the grandparent's in Rusty's bunk beds, the top bunk is a good four feet or more from the ceiling. But when Clark falls through the attic floor and lands on his feet on the top bunk, the ceiling level is only at his knees.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Clark uses a mechanical stapler to put up the lights on the house. The sound of the stapler is that of a power stapler that is powered by an air compressor.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the SWAT team arrives to rescue Mr. Shirley, the entire Griswold house is dark, yet the whole family is inside with all the lights on, but they are not shining through any of the windows. Even when the SWAT team breaks through the windows they are dark, yet the second they arrive inside the house, it is still well lit.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the squirrel is in the house Clark says that Eddie usually eats them. Catherine says he stopped since they have high cholesterol. In fact, like most wild game, squirrel meat is very low in cholesterol.
  
  
• Factual errors: Clark Griswold's Ford Taurus station wagon is shown to have exterior wood paneling, an option that was never available on this car. (However, it's possible the exterior appliques were added by the filmmakers as a nod to the "Wagon Queen Family Truckster" the Griswold family bought in the very first "Vacation" movie.)
  
  
• Factual errors: Clark informs Eddie that the sewer is a storm run-off sewer, implying that the waste material Eddie is pumping into it will not be treated; additionally, with the absence of precipitation or significant melting, Eddie's chemicals remain stagnant until the end of the film. In reality, Chicago has a single, unified sewer system; storm run-off and wastewater run through the same mains for processing by the MWRDGC and the mains are therefore constantly flowing with effluent.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Rusty resets the circuit breaker after the cat is electrocuted the breaker that he resets is a double-pole breaker at the top left of the panel. This type of breaker is used for 240 volt lines not the 120 volt line that would supply an outlet in the United States.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): We're led to believe it's the first time Clark has ever decorated the house. When he and Rusty are getting the decorations out of the garage, Clark says "I've always wanted to do this." If that's true, why does he have so many obviously previously-used Christmas lights if he's never used them to decorate the house?
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Clark's glasses don't have prescription lenses in them. They are flat glass lenses. This is evident when he is in the car at the beginning of the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: The family Christmas tree shrinks smaller and smaller throughout the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: Ellen is looking at the house when the Christmas lights first go on with the light switch. When the switch is turned off she leaves and Clark returns. The extension cord is not plugged in when Clark picks it up. If that was the case the lights would not have turned on with the light switch.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Rusty resets the circuit breaker after the cat is electrocuted, he simply turns the breaker back on. After a circuit breaker "trips", it would go to the center position, and have to be turned all the way "off" before being turned back on.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): One of Bethany's presents to the family is wrapped in "Happy Birthday" paper instead of Christmas wrapping paper (though possibly deliberate due to her delusional nature.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt doubles for Clark and Uncle Lewis when Clark puts out the fire on Uncle Lewis's jacket.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Clark is locked in the attic, he sees a movie reel marked "Christmas 1959", but when he's later watching movies, it says "Christmas 1955". However, there might have been several year's worth of Xmas movies, and the first one we see him watching wasn't necessarily the first reel he looked at in the box.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The attic door that 'traps' Clark in the attic always has a way to open from the inside. The chain on the outside is a simple pull-latch mechanism that can be grasped from the inside; thus, Clark was never really trapped in the attic.
  
  
• Factual errors: Clark says he has 25,000 lights on his house. These are the old-fashioned bulbs that draw 7 watts each; thus, Clark would be drawing 175,000 watts of power, or 175 kilowatt-hours (kW-h) continuous draw, far more than can be delivered to a single-family dwelling using the U.S. standard 120-volt electrical system. Therefore, Clark's main breaker would have instantly tripped the second he would have plugged in all the lights at once, not counting the lights on his Christmas tree and everything else electrical in his house.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clark opens his front door to greet the courier, the door knocker and wreath completely dislodge, even though they were double-bolted from the inside through a 2" thick solid door.
  
  
• Plot holes: At the beginning, the Griswolds are driving home with their new Christmas tree, roots and all, yet they brought no tools with them. All four of the Griswold's together could not uproot a 25-foot tall tree, let alone strap it to the roof of their vehicle without tools or equipment.
  
  
• Continuity: The Griswolds trudge through waist-deep snow to arrive at their Christmas tree, in a geographical area not indicative of the flat landscape of the Midwest, no less, yet when they arrive in the clearing to see their 'Halleluiah' tree, they don't have a single snowflake on their clothing.
  
  

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