My family are super into Christmas. I grew up in a council house, in a single parent family, and my mother didn’t have much money. So we would watch TV and deck the house out in the trashiest crap from the market. It was the only time of the year when I wasn’t worrying about money. It was about going Christmas crazy, and the films of the season are very much a part of that.
On Christmas Day we watch It’s A Wonderful Life. My mum knows all the words. Our other favourites are The Muppet Christmas Carol – I don’t know why; Michael Caine trying to sing? It’s dreadful – and Scrooged. But more recently we have to include The Holiday, which is my mum’s guilty pleasure, and Love Actually, which is my sister’s favourite. Not just her favourite Christmas film: her favourite film. As a woman who’s super into film, I’m like, seriously? But everyone knows it’s the best-worst film ever. The scene where Emma Thompson is crying in her bedroom is one of the most emotional things I’ve ever seen. That one scene could win an Oscar.
Emma and Greg [Wise, Emma’s actor husband] had the idea for a long time to make a film called Last Christmas. They came up with a story, and had been cooking it for a while, but when time came for it to be written, Emma decided they wanted to work with somebody else on it, someone she could write it with. They specifically wanted someone who could write a strong female character who’s quite dysfunctional. So it just sort of landed in my lap. I was also so happy to have Bridesmaids director Paul Feig on-board. He’s such a feminist voice.
It’s been a proper collaboration. Emma is a font of knowledge about film, has amazing ideas, is super feminist and very down to earth. She’s not one of those people who’ve got so famous that they don’t understand how the world works. Our writing process was a conversation between two artists who wanted to write something that was feminist and funny, and had a take, as a new Christmas film for the modern woman. I remember sitting and writing and thinking about all the different things I could include. Like skating and snow. We wanted a balance between ‘this is so Christmassy’ and ‘that’s too much Christmas now’. That’s where Kate [played by Emilia Clarke] working in a Christmas shop came from: there is the delight of Christmas, but this woman has to work there every day, all year round. So she has lost her sense of joy.
It is part of our Western consciousness at Christmastime to watch feel-good movies. The cynic in me says it’s all about capitalism, to make us feel bad about our shitty lives and to be aspirational. And that’s one side of it. Let’s face it, Christmas is often about buying things you don’t necessarily need. But on the other side of that, now that I’m an adult, I don’t think of presents. It’s the only time in modern life where we all sit together and communicate, like we would have done every evening in the ’30s or ’40s.
These films are a totem of slowing down with your family, and this is why they can be crap and we forgive them. They can be schmaltzy or predictable, but we buy it. Because we’re all slightly drunk, on the sofa. My sister and I will be in a cuddle puddle, not knowing where my leg ends and her legs start. Remember that feeling? It still happens now: nothing exists outside the house. It’s a little bubble. So we buy that feeling and mainline it. There’s just something about Christmas. When I hear that first song, or when I see the first decoration in the shops, it makes me feel that the world is just a tiny bit nicer. People who haven’t talked to me for the whole year are saying ‘Merry Christmas’ in the street. It makes me feel that the world isn’t entirely a mess.
We haven’t had a lot of new Christmas films in recent years, but this year there are plenty, thanks largely to Netflix. And that accessibility has got to be a good thing.
The real world has got really scary, so what’s better than sitting in my living room – or escaping to the cinema – and watching something that’s making me not so scared?
I think that’s behind the resurgence in Christmas movies: we’re trying to figure out what’s going on in the world, but also we’re trying to hide.
My sister has been living in Melbourne for two years but is back home for Christmas. The fact that there’s a film coming out, with Emma Thompson in it, that I wrote, means we’re all beside ourselves. My mum has organised a viewing of it in my hometown. She has invited everyone we know, and has borrowed a red carpet from the local shop so that people can put on their fancy outfits and walk down it at the cinema. And we’re going to be able to watch it forever more!
So this is to all the Scrooges out there. Put on your fluffiest onesie. The fluffiest socks. A Christmas hat. And then, put on The Holiday, and you tell me that you don’t cry when Jude Law does Mr Napkin Head. Get into the costume of it and allow yourself to weep. It’s (nearly) Christmas!
‘Last Christmas’ is in cinemas now
Bryony’s latest show, I’m A Phoenix, Bitch, is at Home Manchester, 26-30 November