When Christmas rolls around each year, there are approximately five movies everyone automatically thinks of–two among them being Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (it’s very important to include the full title of the latter). But rarely do people take into account Bridget Jones’ Diary as a quintessential Christmastime movie–in spite of its most key moments taking place on New Year’s Day. In Xmas PJs reading Holidays in Hell
Opening at the height of the depression season for women–the New Year–we’re introduced to our heroine at a particularly vulnerable moment in her life: her mother’s annual New Year’s Day party. Subject to criticism and scrutiny in general from her mother, matters are made worse by her trying to set Bridget up with barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Bridget, who already has her eyes on her boss, Mark Cleaver (Hugh Grant), is slightly attracted to Mark until she notices his hideous holiday sweater, complete with reindeer. In the Christmas sweater that caused Bridget’s averseness
Mark, however, appears semi-revolted by Bridget’s persona as she walks up to him with a glass of wine and cigarette in hand. After meeting her, he makes a derisive comment to his own mother, harshly stating, “Mother, I do not need a blind date. Particularly not with some verbally incontinent spinster who drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and dresses like her mother.” Bridget takes it in stride, pretending to have been too engrossed in the turkey curry to notice, but inwardly, she says, “And that was it. Right there. Right there. That was the moment I suddenly realized that unless some thing changed soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine and I’d finally die fat and alone and be found three weeks later, half-eaten by Alsatians. Or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
The holidays end, with the lingering of cold weather and malaise still in the air, leaving Bridget with the resolve to change her life with the promise of a new year. This inspirational act is, in large part, what makes Bridget Jones’ Diary such essential holiday viewing–its uplifting spirit in the face of January/cold-weather blues is much needed in order to prepare for the onslaught of reality post-Christmas.
