The ugly holiday sweater is knitted into the fabric of Christmas.
It's festooned with snowmen, angels, polar bears and Christmas trees with real dangling ornaments. It's the one with Rudolph the reindeer, with the nose that really glows - and that somehow plays “Silent Night.”
Now, though, the ugly holiday sweater is gold to twenty- and thirty-somethings. Come December, these young adults scour Missoula in search of the most garish Christmas sweater on the rack, in preparation for something that has become fabulously popular: the ugly Christmas sweater party.
This is the place where extreme bad taste is good taste, where one person's fashion mistake is another person's lucky day.
“I know a good idea when I hear it,” said Bodega owner Bob Manzer, who threw the first of presumably many ugly Christmas sweater parties at his bar on Friday, Dec. 8.
The top two ugliest sweaters won cash prizes. The first-place winner sported his grandmother's handiwork.
That sweater “would've even been bad on the golf course,” Manzer said. “There was only second place left to decide because this kid pretty much had the worst sweater, hands down.”
So, what constitutes an ugly sweater?
“Anything from the '80s is usually pretty ugly,” said Brent Dayton, 27, who this year threw his seventh annual ugly sweater party with roommates Amos Templer and Chris Goble.
Each year, the soiree gets larger and crazier, Dayton said. It involves slicked-down combovers, tacky brooches, tight slacks and lights, lights and lights. You'll know the house by the Homer Simpson, Grinch and Frosty the Snowman blowup lawn ornaments.
“It's the Griswold Christmas,” Templer said.
Jesse Coulter, 27, also of Missoula, is the proud owner of eight ugly Christmas sweaters. The former co-owner of Hammer Jacks threw a party at the bar last year, but had hosted many before that.
To Coulter, an ugly sweater is “something that looked good 30 years ago, looks ridiculous and has an animal on it.”
Ugly Christmas sweaters are not hard to find.
Pop “ugly Christmas sweater” into an eBay search engine: 590 hits.
Sellers actually market their Christmas sweaters as “ugly” hoping to attract buyers. Some say, “You'll be the hit of the party.”
“We are getting pretty low,” said Stephanie Haines, who works at the Goodwill on Brooks Street and was bewildered by the hordes of college students who snapped up the ugliest-of-ugly Christmas sweaters.
“The part that seems odd is they want the oldest styles and the gaudiest ones. It's not like they were really pretty Christmas sweaters. They're buying things that you wouldn't normally picture on these individuals.”
It's hard to know with any certainty how or where ugly Christmas sweater parties originated.
There are definitely some theories, though, and most involve Hollywood.
Templer says they got the idea from the 1994 movie “Dumb and Dumber,” starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. In it, Lloyd (Carrey) wears an ugly Christmas sweater during a scene where he's dreaming of his crush on Mary Swanson, played by Lauren Holly.
Another ugly-holiday-sweater blockbuster is “Bridget Jones' Diary.” In the first scene, Bridget Jones knows she's found true love when the only other person at the Christmas party with an ugly sweater is the dreamy Mark Darcy.
Then there's the 1989 movie “Christmas Vacation,” which is full of Griswold-family chaos and, yes, ugly Christmas sweaters.
So keep them, buy them, borrow and trade them. 'Tis the season of Christmas sweaters. Wear the ugliest with pride.
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at Chelsi.Moy@Missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)