Mark Darcy’s Christmas jumper has come a long way since it repelled the heroine of Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) at her mother’s annual New Year’s Day turkey curry buffet. The green turtleneck, festooned with a red-nosed reindeer, sold for £5,670 at auction in November. Colin Firth has protested that he’s been ‘unfairly blamed for subsequent surges in Christmas sweater sales’. He might have a point. Arguably, Sarah Lund’s snowflake sweater in the 2007 Danish TV series The Killing did more to elevate the garment to high fashion. Because nothing quite marks the birth of God like a Nordic noir police procedural.
Frankly, you’ll look more of a wazzock if you don’t wear one
But most anthropologists, I’d imagine, would point the gherkin squarely at Colin Firth and his unwitting propensity to create pop culture moments. The wet shirt costume he wore portraying that other Mr Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice also sold at auction this year, fetching £20,000. (Curiously, you don’t see people mooching around National Trust properties at the weekend in sopping wet wing collars, but give it time.)
Across the Atlantic, the ‘holiday sweater’ has long been a fixture of TV at this time of year, sported by crooners like Andy Williams for their annual Christmas fondue-fest. Before Mark Darcy, the British novelty jumper was largely confined to the horrors sported by Noel Edmonds on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Gyles Brandreth on Breakfast TV in the 1980s. In the original Bridget Jones book, which first appeared as a column in the Independent from 1994–97, Mark Darcy turns round to reveal ‘a V-neck diamond-patterned in shades of yellow and blue – as favoured by the more elderly of the nation’s sports reporters’.
Christmas jumpers were limited to acrylic nasties worn as a joke, in which you wouldn’t risk lighting a cigarette or standing near a flaming pudding – or knitted by someone’s nice but desperately non-U nan. (In the Bridget Jones movie, Mark’s has been knitted by his mother, though as Mrs Darcy is the wife of an admiral, I find this a problematic plot hole.)
As to when the Christmas jumper became A Thing, as they say… At some point during the mid-2000s, when characters from the Chris Morris-Charlie Brooker sitcom Nathan Barley began to bleed into real life, they adopted Christmas jumpers along with facial hair and the fixed-gear bike in an ironic – or, perhaps more accurately, a twattish – way. Sarah Lund showed us that a snowflake Nordic knit could be stylish, and in 2012 the trend became officially A Thing when Save the Children introduced the first Christmas Jumper Day. Last year, 1.5 million children and 27,000 workplaces took part. Spurning the chance to wear a Christmas jumper is now positively Scrooge-like. Frankly, you’ll look more of a wazzock if you don’t wear one.
So how to do it without getting a nasty rash on your neck? Ditching synthetic fabrics is to be encouraged: according to the charity Hubbub, 95 per cent of Christmas jumpers are made wholly or partially from plastic materials (Mars Knitwear, whose snowflake sweaters are made from 100 per cent British wool, estimate that 12 million jumpers will be bought this Christmas). For my children, I look for second-hand Mini Boden or Little White Company Fair Isle on eBay, but I’m hoping to find Bella Freud’s ‘Fairytale of New York’ black and gold jumper in merino wool under the Christmas tree (£385 and, at the time of writing, despite repeatedly refreshing my browser, has not gone into the Black Friday sale). Most right-thinking people would be very pleased to open a Gudrun and Gudrun traditional Scandinavian sweater (from around 200 Euros) – they’re responsible for Sarah Lund’s snowflake number.
In fact, only Colin Firth gets away without wearing one. He has admitted to finding Christmas jumpers triggering after filming that scene, with the set lit at such a high temperature that ‘it melted candles and desiccated the turkey curry. I almost tore the jumper to pieces taking it off between takes. I probably lost about 15 pounds.’ Ever since, he has said, ‘I tend to break into a sweat at the sight of them.’
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