Favorite Fictional Character --- Elizabeth Lane

I'm a Christmas movie junkie and can never get enough of them during the holiday season.  While it's true that most of my favorite movies are the classic TV specials, I have a lot of full length movies that I have to watch during December.  One of those is Christmas in Connecticut with the fantastic Barbara Stanwyck.

She plays probably one of the funniest characters to ever grace a Christmas movie.  Elizabeth Lane is the most popular homemaking columnist in the magazine business.  Her widely popular column appears in Smart Housekeeping and provides millions of women with domestic advice and mouth watering recipes.  Little does anyone know that she not only can't cook but she doesn't have the husband, baby, or the farm in Connecticut that she is always writing about.

Her biggest problem though isn't necessarily the fact that she isn't what she claims to be.  She has a friend, Felix, who happens to own his own bistro so she gets the recipes from him.  Her would be suitor, John Sloan, actually owns a farm in Connecticut so she is able to get those details from him.  The problems that sets off a merry ride of fun is that fact that her publisher, Alexander Yardley, invites a young sailor to her farm for Christmas.  And since her publisher is a stickler for the truth, Elizabeth is forced to marry John and pack up to the farm for Christmas.

Now if the story ended there, Elizabeth would not be on my list of favorite Christmas characters.  Thankfully the rest of the story involved several failed marriage ceremonies, loose cows, stolen sleigh rides, rocking chairs, flapjack flipping, and kidnapping.  It's a fun romantic romp through mistaken assumptions and good old fashioned mischief.  Of course it helps that the young sailor, Jefferson Jones, is both attractive and interested in Elizabeth.

What I really like about the character though is that even on the verge of loosing her job due to her less than truthful behavior, she goes along with both the marriage and charade to protect her editor who knew the truth the whole time.  She goes out of her way to help a friend and I have to admire her for that.  She also isn't the kind of person who allows a good opportunity (the sailor that is) to pass her by and she does what she needs to do to end up where she wants.  She is a strong, independent woman who has made her own way through life and isn't about to take too much from anyone.  The fact that she looks great doing it, is just the icing on the Christmas cookie.